Formation and Evolution of Dust in Type IIb Supernova with Application to the Cassiopeia A Supernova Remnant

TL;DR

This study models dust formation and evolution in Type IIb supernovae, especially applied to Cassiopeia A, revealing dust mass, size, and destruction processes influenced by the supernova's structure and surrounding medium.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed simulation of dust formation and thermal emission evolution in SN IIb remnants, with application to Cas A, considering complex CSM geometries and shock interactions.

Findings

Total dust mass in SN IIb is about 0.167 solar masses.

Most dust grains are smaller than 0.01 micrometers.

Infrared SED evolution depends on ambient gas density and structure.

Abstract

We investigate the formation of dust grains in the ejecta of a SN IIb and their evolution in the shocked gas in the SNR by considering the uniform and power-law density structures for the CSM. Based on these calculations, we also simulate the time evolution of thermal emission from the shock-heated dust in the SNR and compare the results with the observations of Cas A SNR. We find that the total mass of dust formed in the SN IIb is as large as 0.167 M_sun but the average radius of dust is smaller than 0.01 mum and is significantly different from those in SNe II-P with the massive H-envelope. In the explosion with the small-mass H-envelope, the expanding He core undergoes little deceleration, so that the gas density in the He core is too low for large-sized grains to form. In addition, the low-mass H-envelope of the SN IIb leads to the early arrival of the reverse shock at the dust-forming region. If the CSM is more or less spherical, therefore, the newly formed grains would be completely destroyed in the relatively dense shocked gas for the CSM density of n_H > 0.1 cm^{-3}. However, the actual CSM is likely to be non-spherical, so that a part of grains could be ejected into the ISM without being shocked. We demonstrate that the time evolution of the SED by thermal dust emission is sensitive to the ambient gas density and structure that affects the passage of the reverse shock into the ejecta. Thus, the SED evolution well reflects the evolution of dust through erosion by sputtering and stochastic heating. For Cas A, we consider the CSM produced by the steady mass loss of ~8x10^{-5} M_sun/yr during the supergiant phase. Then we find the infrared SED of Cas A is reasonably reproduced by thermal emission from the newly formed dust of 0.08 M_sun, which consists of 0.008 M_sun shocked warm dust and 0.072 M_sun unshocked cold dust.