Tuesday

It is well known that dust grains form in the ejecta of supernovae. However, due to interactions with the circumstellar and interstellar medium, reverse shocks will traverse the ejecta which could potentially destroy large amounts of the newly formed dust material by sputtering or grain-grain collisions. (Magneto-)hydrodynamic simulations help us to model the temporal evolution of gas density and temperature for the passage of a reverse shock in a clumpy supernova ejecta. Subsequently, dust trajectories and destruction rates can be computed using our dust post-processing code Paperboats, which includes gas drag, grain charging, sputtering, gas accretion, and grain-grain collisions.
The oxygen-rich supernova remnant Cassiopeia A provides a unique laboratory to investigate the destruction of dust by the reverse shock.
I will present destruction rates as a function of initial grain sizes, clump gas densities and magnetic fields for this unique system. The results show that grain-grain collisions and sputtering are synergistic and that grain-grain collisions can play a crucial role in determining the surviving dust budget in supernova remnants.