Abstract
Abstract In recent years, dust masses of a few tenths of a solar mass have been found in the expanding ejecta of a number of core-collapse supernovae. How dust forms in such quantities remains poorly understood; theories of dust formation predict lower total masses and much faster formation rates than observations imply. One suggestion to reconcile observations and theory was made by Dwek et al., who proposed that the dust forms very rapidly, and because of its optical depth, is not initially observationally detectable, only being gradually revealed as the ejecta expand. Observational dust masses at early times would then only be lower limits. Using a large grid of radiative transfer models covering dust masses from 10−4 to 1 M ⊙ to calculate both the spectral energy distribution and the emission line profiles from clumpy dust shells, we show that this cannot be the case. Some clump distributions allow dust masses of ∼0.01 M ⊙ to be concealed in clumps and still predict an SED consistent with the observations. However, these geometries predict emission line profiles that are inconsistent with the observations. Similarly, clump geometries that reproduce the observed emission line profiles with dust masses >0.01 M ⊙ do not reproduce the SED. However, models with ∼10−3 M ⊙ of amorphous carbon can reproduce both the SED and the emission line profiles. We conclude that no large masses of dust can be hidden from view in the ejecta of SN 1987A at early epochs, and that the majority of dust must thus have formed at epochs >1000 days.
Highlights
Since the discovery that galaxies at high redshifts already contain large quantities of dust (Bertoldi et al 2003; Laporte et al 2017; Hashimoto et al 2018) the origins of that dust have been the subject of vigorous research
Compared to the range investigated by Ercolano et al (2007) and Wesson et al (2015), we model a greater range of dust masses; a much wider range of clump geometries, described by filling factors from 0.005–0.5, clump radii of Rout/15 Rout/45, and radial number densities varying with r0 to r−4; a range of grain
Considering observations of SN 1987A ∼800 days after explosion, we have investigated a large range of parameters encompassing representative values for core-collapse supernova ejecta, with dust masses from 10−4 to 1 Me, with the aim of determining whether any plausible clump geometry exists that can hide large masses of dust at relatively early times
Summary
Since the discovery that galaxies at high redshifts already contain large quantities of dust (Bertoldi et al 2003; Laporte et al 2017; Hashimoto et al 2018) the origins of that dust have been the subject of vigorous research. The 2011 discovery of several tenths of a solar mass of dust in the remnant of SN 1987A, 23 yr after its explosion (Matsuura et al 2011) confirmed that supernovae could produce dust in the necessary quantities. Ercolano et al (2007), Wesson et al (2015), and Bevan & Barlow (2016) have considered clumpy models of the dust in the ejecta of SN 1987A, using both spectral energy distribution and emission line profile modeling; none of these studies identified any parameters that. We expand the parameter space investigated in those papers, and search for dust configurations that can reproduce both the SED and the emission line profiles to further constrain how much dust could be present before SN 1987A was 1000 days old
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