Amorphous carbons and extinction curve

Abstract

All forms of carbonaceous matter are supposed to be originated from amorphous carbon in the interstellar medium (ISM). In a search for the proper kind of amorphous carbon suitable for ISM particles, a theoretical study of wavelength extinction profiles along peculiar sightlines is performed.We consider nanodiamond core with mantle made of various amorphous carbon models. The study concludes that the extinction curves along different sightlines need different amorphous carbons to compare well with the observational data, whereas a same dust-particle formation process is consistent with all the data, whatever the sightline.