SEEING THE FIRST SUPERNOVAE AT THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE WITH JWST
- Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 (United States)
- CCS-2, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545 (United States)
- Enrico Fermi Institute, Department of Physics, and Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637 (United States)
- Monash Centre for Astrophysics, Monash University, Victoria 3800 (Australia)
- Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, UCSC, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 (United States)
- Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218 (United States)
- XTD-6, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545 (United States)
The first stars ended the cosmic dark ages and created the first heavy elements necessary for the formation of planets and life. The properties of these stars remain uncertain, and it may be decades before individual Population III (Pop III) stars are directly observed. Their masses, however, can be inferred from their supernova explosions, which may soon be found in both deep-field surveys by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and in all-sky surveys by the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST). We have performed radiation hydrodynamical simulations of the near-infrared signals of Pop III pair-instability supernovae in realistic circumstellar environments with Lyman absorption by the neutral intergalactic medium. We find that JWST and WFIRST will detect these explosions out to z {approx} 30 and 20, respectively, unveiling the first generation of stars in the universe.
- OSTI ID:
- 22078360
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 762, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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