Sputtering in the outflows of cool stars

Radiation pressure acts to accelerate dust grains and, by transfer of momentum through collisions with the gas, drives the outflows of late-type stars. Some of these dust-gas collisions may be energetic enough to remove atoms from the dust grains. From an assumed initial size distribution for the dust grains, the method of Krüger et al. is used to study the evolution of a sample of spherical amorp...