Destruction of the interstellar dust by a supernova

TL;DR

This work tackles the variable destruction of interstellar dust by supernova shocks as a function of ambient medium properties. It employs 3D hydrodynamic simulations with dust treated as superparticles to self-consistently model thermal and kinetic sputtering and the cooling of dust, across a range of densities and metallicities. The study reveals two regimes of destruction—rapid and near-complete in dense, compact remnants and gradual, weaker destruction in low-density remnants— and shows that the destroyed mass peaks when the sputtering time $t_{sp}$ approaches the SN age; it also finds that $\log M_d$ scales with metal content as ${\rm log} M_d \sim {\rm [Z/H]}$ (or $M_d \sim \zeta_d$) and that dust cooling reduces destruction by up to a factor of about $1.6$--$1.7$, with stronger effects at higher densities. These results refine galaxy-scale dust-budget estimates by highlighting how environment controls SN-driven dust destruction, with implications for Milky Way-like systems and dust-rich ULIRGs at high redshift.

Abstract

Destruction of the interstellar dust proceeds primary behind supernova shocks. The previous estimates of the mass of the interstellar dust destroyed in the SN remnant do not take into account the physical properties of the ambient medium. Here we consider how some parameters, i.e. gas density and metallicity, can influence the destruction of the interstellar dust. We show that there are two regimes of the interstellar dust grains destruction in SN remnants: rapid and almost complete in compact low-mass SN remnants expanding in dense medium, and gradual and weak destruction in massive remnants evolving in the low-dense environment. When time for thermal sputtering is close to the dynamical one, i.e. to the SN remnant age, the mass of the interstellar dust destroyed in the SN remnant reaches its maximum value. We find that change of the ambient gas density results in the reduction of the dust mass logarithmically. We argue that dust cooling suppresses the interstellar dust destruction up to a factor of 1.6 by mass. This factor decreases for higher density of the ambient medium. We found that the dust mass depends linearly on gas metallicity as ${\rm log}~M_d \sim {\rm [Z/H]}$ or, in other words, on the dust-to-gas ratio as $M_d \sim ζ_d$. In turn, the destruction efficiency is higher in low-metallicity environments due to relatively longer adiabatic phase. We point out that the mass of the interstellar dust destroyed per one SN in a high density environment of the high star formation regions like in local ultraluminous infrared and high-redshift massive galaxies is about several times smaller than that in the Milky Way diffuse medium.

Figures (9)

• Figure 1: Gas temperature (yellow lines, left axis) and grain sputtering time (brown lines, right axis) in the SN bubble evolving adiabatically (the temperature is constrained by $10^6$ K) in the ambient medium with density $n = 3,\ 1$, and 0.3 cm$^{-3}$ (from bottom to top for yellow and brown lines, respectively). The grain size is $a_0 = 0.1\mu$m. The dash line depicts the dynamical time (right axis), i.e. the SN age.
• Figure 2: The radius of the SN bubble expanding in a gas with density $n_b = 0.1,\ 0.3,\ 1,\ 3$ and 10 cm$^{-3}$ from upper to lower lines, respectively. The thick line depicts the radius for 1 cm$^{-3}$.
• Figure 3: The mass of the interstellar dust (left axis) destroyed in the SN bubble expanding in a gas with density $n_b = 0.1,\ 0.3,\ 1,\ 3$ and 10 cm$^{-3}$ from right to left red lines, respectively. The ’dust mass survival’ fraction (right axis) in the SN bubble. The thick lines depict the dependences for 1 cm$^{-3}$.
• Figure 4: The mass of the interstellar dust destroyed in the bubble expanding in the ambient medium with density $n$. The red line shows the runs with the fiducial spatial resolution ('x1'). The sets of runs with half ('/2') and doubled ('x2') cell sizes are depicted by green and blue lines, respectively.
• Figure 5: The mass-averaged temperature (yellow lines, left axis) and density (brown lines, right axis) of the gas, in which grains are located, inside the SN bubble evolving in the ambient medium with density $n_b = 0.1,\ 0.3,\ 1,\ 3$ and 10 cm$^{-3}$ (from right to left for yellow lines and from bottom to top for brown lines, respectively).