Thermal Emission of Interplanetary Dust Cloud Models.

A method is described for computing the thermal emission of the interplanetary dust material. Processes specifically included in these models are the optics and thermodynamics of the dust particles, the Poynting-Robertson effect and the physics of sublimation, while the effects of the coronal gas and the solar wind are neglected. Special attention is given to the variation of the temperature with particle size and the influence of sublimation on the space and size distribution of particles near the sun. Models are constructed for a well-known substance to show the qualitative features of the thermal emission, and the procedure is then reversed to deduce some properties of the interplanetary dust material from recent observations.