On the size distribution of collision fragments of NLC dust particles and their relevance to meteoric smoke particles

Abstract

We present the results from a new dust probe MUDD on the PHOCUS payload which was launched in July 2011. In the interior of MUDD all the incoming NLC/PMSE icy dust particles will collide, at an impact angle ~70° to the surface normal, with a grid constructed such that no dust particles can directly hit the bottom plate of the probe. Only collision fragments will continue down towards the bottom plate. We determine an energy distribution of the charged fragments by applying a variable electric field between the impact grid and the bottom plate of MUDD. We find that ~30% of the charged fragments have kinetic energies less than 10eV, ~20% have energies between 10 and 20eV while ~50% have energies above 20eV. The transformation of limits in kinetic energy for ice or meteoric smoke particles (MSP) to radius is dependent on many assumptions, the most crucial being fragment velocity. We find, however, that the sizes of the charged fragments most probably are in the range of 1 to 2nm if meteoric smoke particles (MSP), and slightly higher if ice particles. The observed high charging fraction and the dominance of fragment sizes below a few nm makes it very unlikely that the fragments can consist mainly of ice but that they must be predominantly MSP as predicted by Havnes and Næsheim (2007) and recently observed by Hervig et al. (2012). The MUDD results indicate that MSP are embedded in NLC/PMSE ice particles with a minimum volume filling factor of ~.05% in the unlikely case that all embedded MSP are released and charged. A few % volume filling factor (Hervig et al., 2012) can easily be reached if ~10% of the MSP are released and that their charging probability is ~0.1.