The general relativistic instability supernova of a supermassive population III star
- Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 (United States)
- Monash Centre for Astrophysics, Monash University, Victoria 3800 (Australia)
- Center for Computational Sciences and Engineering, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
- T-2, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545 (United States)
The formation of supermassive Population III stars with masses ≳10,000 M{sub ☉} in primeval galaxies in strong ultraviolet backgrounds at z ∼ 15 may be the most viable pathway to the formation of supermassive black holes by z ∼ 7. Most of these stars are expected to live for short times and then directly collapse to black holes, with little or no mass loss over their lives. However, we have now discovered that non-rotating primordial stars with masses close to 55,000 M{sub ☉} can instead die as highly energetic thermonuclear supernovae powered by explosive helium burning, releasing up to 10{sup 55} erg, or about 10,000 times the energy of a Type Ia supernova. The explosion is triggered by the general relativistic contribution of thermal photons to gravity in the core of the star, which causes the core to contract and explosively burn. The energy release completely unbinds the star, leaving no compact remnant, and about half of the mass of the star is ejected into the early cosmos in the form of heavy elements. The explosion would be visible in the near infrared at z ≲ 20 to Euclid and the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, perhaps signaling the birth of supermassive black hole seeds and the first quasars.
- OSTI ID:
- 22365452
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 790, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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