Massive stars exploding in a He-rich circumstellar medium III. SN 2006jc: IR echoes from new and old dust in the progenitor CSM

Abstract

We present near- and mid-infrared (IR) photometric data of the Type Ibn supernova (SN) 2006jc obtained with the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT), the Gemini North Telescope, and the Spitzer Space Telescope between days 86 and 493 post-explosion. We find that the IR behaviour of SN 2006jc can be explained as a combination of IR echoes from two manifestations of circumstellar material. The bulk of the near-IR emission arises from an IR echo from newly-condensed dust in a cool dense shell (CDS) produced by the interaction of the ejecta outward shock with a dense shell of circumstellar material ejected by the progenitor in a luminous blue variable (LBV) like outburst about two years prior to the SN explosion. The CDS dust mass reaches a modest 3.0 x 10^(-4) M(solar) by day 230. While dust condensation within a CDS formed behind the ejecta inward shock has been proposed before for one event (SN 1998S), SN 2006jc is the first one showing evidence for dust condensation in a CDS formed behind the ejecta outward shock in the circumstellar material. At later epochs, a substantial and growing contribution to the IR fluxes arises from an IR echo from pre-existing dust in the progenitor wind. The mass of the pre-existing CSM dust is at least ~8 x 10^(-3) M(solar). This work therefore adds to the evidence that mass-loss from the progenitors of core-collapse supernovae could be a major source of dust in the universe. However, yet again, we see no direct evidence that the explosion of a supernova produces anything other than a very modest amount of dust.

18 pages, 10 figures, accepted to MNRAS

References in corpus (5)

• A giant outburst two years before the core-collapse of a massive star
• SN 2006jc: A Wolf-Rayet Star Exploding in a Dense He-Rich Circumstellar Medium
• SN 2004aw: Confirming Diversity of Type Ic Supernovae
• A Spitzer Space Telescope Study of SN 2003gd: Still No Direct Evidence that Core-Collapse Supernovae are Major Dust Factories
• Swift and Chandra Detections of Supernova 2006jc: Evidence for Interaction of the Supernova Shock with a Circumstellar Shell

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Dust and the type II-plateau supernova 2004et
• Massive stars exploding in a He-rich circumstellar medium. I. Type Ibn (SN 2006jc-like) events
• The type IIb SN 2008ax: spectral and light curve evolution
• Properties of newly formed dust by SN2006jc based on near-to-mid infrared observation with AKARI
• Optical photometry and spectroscopy of the type Ibn supernova SN 2006jc until the onset of dust formation