We model dust formation in a core collapse supernova explosion like that of SN 1987A .
In treating the gas-phase formation of dust grain nuclei as a chemical process , our model borrows from and improves upon the recent progress toward modeling dust formation .
We compute the synthesis of fourteen species of dust grains in supernova ejecta generated with a stellar evolutionary and explosive nucleosynthesis calculation designed to approximate the parameters of SN 1987A .
We explicitly integrate a non-equilibrium network of the chemical reactions contributing to the production of each species ’ condensation nuclei and follow the growth of condensation nuclei into grains via accretion and coagulation .
We include the effects of radioactive decay of ^ { 56 } Co , ^ { 57 } Co , ^ { 44 } Ti , and ^ { 22 } Na on the chemistry and thermodynamics of the ejecta , and of grain electric charge on grain growth .
The grain temperature , which can differ from the gas temperature , is used to calculate a surface-tension-corrected evaporation rate .
The van der Waals force between grains is included in the coagulation model .
In addition to evaporation , we include He ^ { + } , Ne ^ { + } , Ar ^ { + } , and O weathering as grain destruction processes .
We use our dust synthesis model in combination with a crude model for anisotropic ^ { 56 } Ni dredge-up into the core ejecta , which produces the so-called “ nickel bubbles ” , to compute the total dust mass and molecular-species-specific grain size distribution .
We find a total dust mass between 0.41 M _ { \odot } and 0.73 M _ { \odot } , depending on the density in the perturbations caused by the nickel bubbles ( the dust mass produced varies as the 0.26 power of the initial density ) .
The dominant grain species produced , from highest mass to lowest mass , are : magnesia , silicon , forsterite , iron sulfide , carbon , silicon dioxide , alumina , and iron .
The combined grain size distribution is a power law dN / da \propto a ^ { -4.39 } , steeper than the observationally inferred dN / da \propto a ^ { -3.5 } .
Early ejecta compaction by expanding radioactive ^ { 56 } Ni bubbles strongly enhances dust synthesis .
Since we do not model microscopic mixing in the explosion , dust synthesis is sensitive to the local elemental composition .
This underscores the need for improved understanding of hydrodynamic transport and mixing over the entire pre-homologous-expansion period of a core collapse explosion .