A Survey for Dust in Type IIn Supernovae

Details A Survey for Dust in Type IIn Supernovae A Survey for Dust in Type IIn Supernovae

Apr 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009sptz.prop60122f&link_type=abstract

Spitzer Proposal ID #60122

Physics

Scientific paper

We propose to carry out a Spitzer/IRAC mid-infrared survey for thermal dust emission in all observable Type IIn supernovae from the past 10 years. The source of the large amounts of dust observed in high redshift galaxies has remained uncertain for nearly 40 years. Despite the success of models in producing dust within supernova explosions, only a handful of supernovae show direct observational evidence for dust condensation, and these examples all yield 2-3 orders of magnitude less dust than predicted by the models. Recent observations suggest Type IIn supernovae may condense more dust than typical core-collapse events. Due to the small number of Type IIn events (2-3% of all core-collapse supernovae), there exist too little data to draw any unbiased conclusions concerning the nature of dust production in this particular subclass. The few dust forming Type IIn supernovae, however, show late-time infrared emission sometimes more than five or six years following their initial detection, making remnant archeology possible. While previous Spitzer/IRAC surveys have searched for dust in supernovae, none have targeted these Type IIn events. A Spitzer/IRAC follow-up survey of all observable Type IIn supernovae from the past ten years will determine the extent to which this subclass produces dust. Ground-based observations are insufficient. Spitzer/IRAC provides the necessary sensitivity at wavelengths spanning the peak of the blackbody emission from the warmest grains, as well as the tail-end emission from colder dust. With only 5 minutes of integration in both 3.6 and 4.5 micron bands, this survey is sensitive to dust in almost all of our targets given our flux estimates. In only 22.4 hours, we can obtain follow-up photometry in both bands for all positions of observable Type IIn supernovae discovered in the past ten years.

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