Dust sublimation 2026-10-06
An irradiated grain loses solid material by sublimation. Its lifetime depends strongly on temperature and composition. In a planetary dust tail, a short lifetime can truncate the distribution well before a relative orbital wrap.
Dust-tail caustic 2026-10-06
A zero of the angular drift in a cold single-grain-size dust tail produces a formally divergent number density per unit angle. The divergence is integrable when the exact local angle-to-age map is retained. A spread of launch velocities or radiation-pressure coefficients removes the singularity.
Steady dust-tail continuity equation 2026-10-06
For a single-stream dust tail with injection rate , monotone angular distance , and survival probability , the number per unit angle is . A vanishing angular drift creates an idealized density enhancement; velocity dispersion rounds it.