A Search for Dust Formation around the Extremely Bright Type IIn SN 2010jl

Past studies of core-collpase supernovae (SNe) have revealed evidence of dust formation in their ejecta ~300-600 days after explosion. However, the mass of dust synthesized is several orders of magnitude less than that needed to explain observed dust quantities at high-z. Recent studies of SNe exhibiting strong circumstellar interaction (Type IIn) have found evidence of dust formation in the CSM as early as ~50 days after explosion and have suggested that the addition of this new mechanism may reconcile this inconsisitency. The very recent discovery of the brightest Type IIn SN ever observed, SN 2010jl, gives us a unique opportunity of studying this new mechanism of dust formation. We propose to obtain one observation of SN 2010jl with IRAC to search for signs of CSM-interaction and to investigate the mechanism for early dust formation in its CSM as well as understand whether early-dust-forming SNe are producing significantly more dust and are a viable explaination for the large quantities of dust observed in the early universe.