Very Deep Inside the SN 1987A Core Ejecta: Molecular Structures Seen in 3D

Abstract

Most massive stars end their lives in core-collapse supernova explosions and enrich the interstellar medium with explosively nucleosynthesized elements. Following core collapse, the explosion is subject to instabilities as the shock propagates outwards through the progenitor star. Observations of the composition and structure of the innermost regions of a core-collapse supernova provide a direct probe of the instabilities and nucleosynthetic products. SN 1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is one of very few supernovae for which the inner ejecta can be spatially resolved but are not yet strongly affected by interaction with the surroundings. Our observations of SN 1987A with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) are of the highest resolution to date and reveal the detailed morphology of cold molecular gas in the innermost regions of the remnant. The 3D distributions of carbon and silicon monoxide (CO and SiO) emission differ, but both have a central deficit, or torus-like distribution, possibly a result of radioactive heating during the first weeks ("nickel heating"). The size scales of the clumpy distribution are compared quantitatively to models, demonstrating how progenitor and explosion physics can be constrained.

ApJL accepted, 9 pages, 5 figures

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Cited by in corpus (31)

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• The fully developed remnant of a neutrino-driven supernova: Evolution of ejecta structure and asymmetries in SNR Cassiopeia A
• Hydrodynamic simulations unravel the progenitor-supernova-remnant connection in SN 1987A
• NS 1987A in SN 1987A
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• Blasts from the Past: Supernova Shock Breakouts among X-Ray Transients in the XMM-Newton Archive
• The infancy of core-collapse supernova remnants
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• The role of jets in exploding supernovae and in shaping their remnants
• Impact of clumping on core-collapse supernova radiation
• Supernova 2017eaw: molecule and dust formation from infrared observations
• The matter beyond the ring: the recent evolution of SN 1987A observed by the Hubble Space Telescope
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• Imprints of the jittering jets explosion mechanism in the morphology of the supernova remnant SNR 0540-69.3
• Search for a Radio Pulsar in the Remnant of Supernova 1987A
• Clumps and rings of ejecta in SNR 0540-69.3 as seen in 3D
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• Measuring dust in core-collapse supernovae with a Bayesian approach to line profile modelling
• Dicarbon formation in collisions of two carbon atoms
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• Tracing the ejecta structure of SN 1987A: Insights and diagnostics from 3D MHD simulations
• Storing magnetic fields in pre-collapse cores of massive stars
• Polarized radio emission unveils the structure of the pre-supernova circumstellar magnetic field and the radio emission in SN1987A
• Possible post-kick jets in SN 1987A
• Revisiting the formation of molecules and dust in core collapse supernovae
• Radiative-transfer modeling of supernovae in the nebular-phase. A novel treatment of chemical mixing in spherical symmetry