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Princeton University Star Formation/ISM Rendezvous (SFIR)
Destruction, Survival, and Growth of Dust Grains within Superbubbles
We have performed three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations and semi-analytical calculations, in order to address the injection, survival and growth of dust grains within starburst-driven superbubbles in the local and high-redshift Universe. Upon the collision of supernova blast waves with an encompassing supershell, the former are mostly reflected. As a result, pre-existent dust grains locked up in the swept-up shell remain largely unaffected. Not only that, but supernova-condensed dust grains are not efficiently destroyed as the supernova remnants evolve in the very tenuous superbubble cavity, where gas-grain collisions are infrequent. As a result, supernovae within sufficiently massive swept-up shells may at last inject more dust to the ISM than what the shocks they produce are able to destroy. We have also tackled the "problematic" growth of dust grains in the high-redshift Universe, thought to be completely inhibited by a higher CMB floor temperature (~20 K at z~6) and Coulomb repulsive forces. We thus have demonstrated that both, dust grain growth and dust produced by supernovae, are efficient pathways that lead to massive amounts of dust to be present in environments populated by young starbursts.