H 2 MOLECULAR CLUSTERS WITH EMBEDDED MOLECULES AND ATOMS AS THE SOURCE OF THE DIFFUSE INTERSTELLAR BANDS

We suggest that the diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) arise from absorption lines of electronic transitions in molecular clusters primarily composed of a single molecule, atom, or ion (“seed”), embedded in a single-layer shell of H2 molecules. Less abundant variants of the cluster, including two seed molecules and/or a two-layer shell of H2 molecules, may also occur. The lines are broadened, blended, and wavelength-shifted by interactions between the seed and surrounding H2 shell. We refer to these clusters as contaminated H2 clusters (CHCs). We show that CHC spectroscopy matches the diversity of observed DIB spectral profiles and provides good fits to several DIB profiles based on a rotational temperature of 10 K. CHCs arise from ∼centimeter-sized, dirty H2 ice balls, called contaminated H2 ice macro-particles (CHIMPs), formed in cold, dense, giant molecular clouds (GMCs), and later released into the interstellar medium (ISM) upon GMC disruption. Attractive interactions, arising from Van der Waals and ion-induced dipole potentials, between the seeds and H2 molecules enable CHIMPs to attain centimeter-sized dimensions. When an ultraviolet (UV) photon is absorbed in the outer layer of a CHIMP, it heats the icy matrix and expels CHCs into the ISM. While CHCs are quickly destroyed by absorbing UV photons, they are replenished by the slowly eroding CHIMPs. Since CHCs require UV photons for their release, they are most abundant at, but not limited to, the edges of UV-opaque molecular clouds, consistent with the observed, preferred location of DIBs. An inherent property of CHCs, which can be characterized as nanometer size, spinning, dipolar dust grains, is that they emit in the radio-frequency region. We also show that the CHCs offer a natural explanation for the anomalous microwave emission feature in the ∼10–100 GHz spectral region.