The mineralogy of newly formed dust in active galactic nuclei
  The tori around active galactic nuclei (AGN) are potential formation sites
for large amounts of dust, and they may help resolve the so-called dust budget
crisis at high redshift. We investigate the dust composition in 53 of the 87
Palomar Green (PG) quasars showing the 9.7 micron silicate feature in emission.
By simultaneously fitting the mid-infrared spectroscopic features and the
underlying continuum, we estimate the mass fraction in various amorphous and
crystalline dust species. We find that the dust consists predominantly of
alumina and amorphous silicates, with a small fraction in crystalline form. The
mean crystallinity is 8 +/- 6%, with more than half of the crystallinities
greater than 5%, well above the upper limit determined for the Galaxy. Higher
values of crystallinity are found for higher oxide fractions and for more
luminous sources.
