Keywords

We present our latest results on near- to mid-infrared (MIR) observation of supernova (SN) 2006jc at 200 days after the discovery using the Infrared Camera (IRC) on board AKARI. The near-infrared (2–5 μm) spectrum of SN 2006jc is obtained for the first time and is found to be well interpreted in terms of the thermal emission from amorphous carbon of 800 ± 10 K with the mass of 6.9 ± 0.5 × 10⁻⁵ M_☉ that was formed in the SN ejecta. This dust mass newly formed in the ejecta of SN 2006jc is in a range similar to those obtained for other several dust-forming core-collapse supernovae based on recent observations (i.e., 10⁻³–10⁻⁵ M_☉). MIR photometric data with AKARI/IRC MIR-S/S7, S9W, and S11 bands have shown excess emission over the thermal emission by hot amorphous carbon of 800 K. This MIR excess emission is likely to be accounted for by the emission from warm amorphous carbon dust of 320 ± 10 K with the mass of 2.7^+0.7_−0.5 × 10⁻³ M_☉ rather than by the band emission of astronomical silicate and/or silica grains. This warm amorphous carbon dust is expected to have been formed in the mass-loss wind associated with the Wolf–Rayet stellar activity before the SN explosion. Our result suggests that a significant amount of dust is condensed in the mass-loss wind prior to the SN explosion.