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Title: Pair-instability supernovae at the epoch of reionization

Journal Article · · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
 [1];  [2];  [1]
  1. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA (United States)
  2. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy; Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
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Pristine stars with masses between ~140 and 260 M⊙ are theoretically predicted to die as pair-instability supernovae. These very massive progenitors could come from Population III (Pop III) stars in the early universe. We model the light curves and spectra of pair-instability supernovae over a range of masses and envelope structures. At redshifts of reionization $z ≥ 6$, we calculate the rates and detectability of pair-instability and core-collapse supernovae, and show that with the James Webb Space Telescope it is possible to determine the contribution of Pop III and Pop II stars towards reionization by constraining the stellar initial mass function at that epoch using these supernovae. We also find the rates of Type Ia supernovae, and show that they are not rare during reionization, and can be used to probe the mass function at 4–8 M⊙. If the budget of ionizing photons was dominated by contributions from top-heavy Pop III stars, we predict that the bright end of the galaxy luminosity function will be contaminated by pair-instability supernovae.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF); Univ. of California, Oakland, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231; FC02-06ER41438
OSTI ID:
1564899
Journal Information:
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 422, Issue 3; ISSN 0035-8711
Publisher:
Royal Astronomical SocietyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 57 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (12)

Explosion and nucleosynthesis of low-redshift pair-instability supernovae journal June 2014
CHEMICAL ENRICHMENT OF DAMPED Lyα SYSTEMS AS A DIRECT CONSTRAINT ON POPULATION III STAR FORMATION journal July 2013
Formation of the first stars journal October 2013
The James Webb Space Telescope North Ecliptic Pole Time-domain Field. I. Field Selection of a JWST Community Field for Time-domain Studies journal October 2018
The First Billion Years project: the impact of stellar radiation on the co-evolution of Populations II and III journal November 2012
Radiative properties of pair-instability supernova explosions journal November 2012
Preserving chemical signatures of primordial star formation in the first low-mass stars journal September 2015
Synthetic Spectra of Pair-instability Supernovae in 3D journal April 2019
Formation of the first stars conference July 2011
Formation of the First Stars journal May 2005
The First Billion Years project - III: The impact of stellar radiation on the coevolution of Populations II and III text January 2012
Explosion and nucleosynthesis of low redshift pair instability supernovae text January 2014

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Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
Astronomy & Astrophysics
stars: Population II
stars: Population III
supernovae: general
dark ages
reionization
first stars