Properties of shocked dust grains in supernova remnants

Shockwaves driven by supernovae both destroy dust and reprocess the surviving grains, greatly affecting the resulting dust properties of the interstellar medium (ISM). While these processes have been extensively studied theoretically, observational constraints are limited. We use physically motivated models of dust emission to fit the infrared (IR) spectral energy distributions of seven Galactic supernova remnants, allowing us to determine the distribution of dust mass between diffuse and dense gas phases, and between large and small grain sizes. We find that the dense (similar to 10(3) cm(-3)), relatively cool (similar to 10(3) K) gas phase contains > 90 per cent of the dust mass, making the warm dust located in the X-ray emitting plasma (similar to 1 cm(-3)/10(6) K) a negligible fraction of the total, despite dominating the mid-IR emission. The ratio of small (less than or similar to 10 nm) to large (greater than or similar to 0.1 mu m) grains in the cold component is consistent with that in the ISM, and possibly even higher, whereas the hot phase is almost entirely devoid of small grains. This suggests that grain shattering, which processes large grains into smaller ones, is ineffective in the low-density gas, contrary to model predictions. Single-phase models of dust destruction in the ISM, which do not account for the existence of the cold swept-up material containing most of the dust mass, are likely to greatly overestimate the rate of dust destruction by supernovae.