Evaporation and compaction of colliding dust clusters at different impact parameters

Abstract

The dynamics of colliding dust clusters is important in the study of dust cloud evolution. In this work, a molecular dynamics simulation of the collision of two spherical clusters of SiO₂ particles was done to find out how the evaporation fraction depends on impact parameter. By measuring the average number of neighbors each unevaporated grain has, we found a critical impact parameter that results in maximum cluster compaction.