PAH Emission Spectra: Dependence on Starlight and Dust Properties

B. T. Draine and collaborators at Princeton University provide emission spectra from their 2021 paper on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) excitation. The dataset includes spectra for 14 different radiation fields, including modified MMP, BC03 and BPASS stellar population models, and an M31 bulge spectrum. These spectra are used to calculate dust grain heating and resulting infrared emission for selected values of the intensity scaling parameter U.

Use Cases

• Modeling PAH emission features in different galactic environments based on the 14 provided radiation spectra.
• Studying the impact of stellar population age and metallicity on dust heating based on BC03 and BPASS model spectra.
• Analyzing the dependence of infrared emission on radiation field intensity based on the intensity scaling parameter U.
• Comparing theoretical dust emission spectra with observational data from sources like the M31 bulge.

Strengths

• Spectra are derived from a peer-reviewed 2021 paper published in the Astrophysical Journal.
• Includes 14 distinct radiation spectra from established models (mMMP, BC03, BPASS) and an observational source (M31).
• Data is associated with a publicly available preprint on arXiv (arXiv:2011.07046).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Paper: 'Excitation of PAH Emission: Dependence on Starlight Spectrum, Intensity, PAH Size Distribution, and PAH Ionization' (Draine, Li, Hensley, Hunt, Sandstrom, & Smith 2021, Astrophysical Journal).

Collection Method

Theoretical calculations of dust grain heating and infrared emission for specified radiation fields.