A new scheme of radiation transfer in HII regions including transient heating of grains

Abstract

A new scheme of radiation transfer for understanding the infrared spectra of HII regions, has been developed. This scheme considers non-equilibrium processes (e.g. transient heating of the very small grains, VSG; and the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, PAH) also, in addition to the equilibrium thermal emission from normal dust grains (BG). The spherically symmetric interstellar dust cloud is segmented into a large number of “onion skin” shells in order to implement the non-equilibrium processes. The scheme attempts to fit the observed SED originating from the dust component, by exploring the following parameters: (i) geometrical details of the dust cloud, (ii) PAH size and abundance, (iii) composition of normal grains (BG), (iv) radial distribution of all dust (BG, VSG & PAH). The scheme has been applied to a set of five compact H II regions (IRAS 18116 − 1646, 18162 − 2048, 19442 + 2427, 22308 + 5812, and 18434 - 0242) whose spectra are available with adequate spectral resolution. The best fit models and inferences about the parameters for these sources are presented.