Both CO and SiO have been observed at early and late phases in SN 1987A. H_2 was predicted to form at roughly the same time as these molecules, but was not detected at early epochs. Here we report the detection of NIR lines from H_2 at 2.12 mu and 2.40 mu in VLT/SINFONI spectra obtained between days 6489 and 10,120. The emission is concentrated to the core of the supernova in contrast to H-alpha and approximately coincides with the [Si I]/[Fe II] emission detected previously in the ejecta. Different excitation mechanisms and power sources of the emission are discussed. From the nearly constant H_2 luminosities we favour excitation resulting from the 44Ti decay.
@article{arxiv.1603.05560,
title = {Discovery of molecular hydrogen in SN 1987A},
author = {Claes Fransson and Josefin Larsson and Jason Spyromilio and Bruno Leibundgut and Richard McCray and Anders Jerkstrand},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1603.05560},
year = {2016}
}