Pulsational Pair-instability Supernovae

By Stan Woosley. 2016

548 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The final evolution of stars in the mass range 70–140 M ⊙ is explored. Depending upon their mass loss history and rotation rates, these stars will end their lives as pulsational pair-instability supernovae (PPISN) producing a great variety of observational transients with total durations ranging from weeks to millennia and luminosities from 1041 to over 1044 erg s−1. No nonrotating model radiates more than 5 × 10 50 erg of light or has a kinetic energy exceeding 5 × 10 51 erg, but greater energies are possible, in principle, in magnetar-powered explosions, which are explored. Many events resemble SNe Ibn, SNe Icn, and SNe IIn, and some potential observational counterparts are mentioned. Some PPISN can exist in a dormant state for extended periods, producing explosions millennia after their first violent pulse. These dormant supernovae contain bright Wolf–Rayet stars, possibly embedded in bright X-ray and radio sources. The relevance of PPISN to supernova impostors like Eta Carinae, to superluminous supernovae, and to sources of gravitational radiation is discussed. No black holes between 52 and 133 M ⊙ are expected from stellar evolution in close binaries.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/57f6eef606d6f7f8b9e2c8c184864175d1f18534

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Michela Mapelli
2. N. Giacobbo
3. Ilya Mandel
4. Mario Spera
5. D. Holz
6. Stan Woosley
7. F. Rasio
8. N. Langer

Citations in the corpus

• Progenitors of gravitational wave mergers: binary evolution with the stellar grid-based code ComBinE (2018, background): “Pulsational PISNe (Woosley 2017) are thought to remove a substantial amount of mass from stars shortly before their final core collapse and therefore lead to a similar effect of further reducing the upper mass limit of the BHs formed below the ordinary pair instability regime.”
• The effect of the metallicity-specific star formation history on double compact object mergers (2019, background): “For example, (pulsational) PISNes (see for example Woosley 2017 and references therein) can prevent the formation of BHs with masses between around 50 and 130 M , i.e. with chirp masses between 45 and 115 M for equal-mass binaries.”
• 4-OGC: Catalog of Gravitational Waves from Compact Binary Mergers (2021, background): “The upper mass gap is expected to occur at ∼50–120 Me(Yoshida et al. 2016; Belczynski et al. 2016; Woosley 2017, 2017; Marchant et al. 2019; Stevenson et al. 2019; van Son et al. 2020).”
• Search for Gravitational Lensing Signatures in LIGO-Virgo Binary Black Hole Events (2019, background): “The upper mass limit is motivated by pulsational pair-instability supernova, which prevents the formation of stellar remnants with mass ∼ 50 − 150M (Spera & Mapelli 2017; Woosley 2017; Belczynski et al. 2016b; Heger & Woosley 2002).”
• Binary Black Hole Population Properties Inferred from the First and Second Observing Runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo (2018, background): “This gap might arise from the combined effect of pulsational pairinstability (Barkat et al. 1967; Heger et al. 2003; Woosley et al. 2007; Woosley 2017) and pair-instability (Fowler & Hoyle 1964; Ober et al. 1983; Bond et al. 1984) supernovae.”
• Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics ( ): Convective Boundaries, Element Diffusion, and Massive Star Explosions (2017, background): “Alternatively, a series of bursts can trigger a cyclic pattern of nuclear burning, expansion, and contraction, leading to a pulsational pair-instability supernova that leaves a black hole remnant (Barkat et al. 1967; Woosley et al. 2007a; Chatzopoulos & Wheeler 2012; Limongi 2017; Woosley 2017).”
• GWTC-1: A Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog of Compact Binary Mergers Observed by LIGO and Virgo during the First and Second Observing Runs (2018, background): “To date, no binary components have been observed in either of the two putative mass gaps [132, 133] – one between NSs and BHs and the other one due to pair instability supernovae [130, 203].”
• The cosmic merger rate of neutron stars and black holes (2018, background): “- Pulsational pair-instability and pair-instability SNe are included, according to Spera & Mapelli (2017) (see also Woosley 2017 and Giacobbo et al. 2018).”
• Very massive stars, pair-instability supernovae and intermediate-mass black holes with the sevn code (2017, methodology): “Recent hydrodynamical simulations (Woosley 2017) show that if 32 M .”
• Merging black hole binaries: the effects of progenitor's metallicity, mass-loss rate and Eddington factor (2017, methodology): “Our description of PPISNe is based on the formalism presented in Spera et al. (2016) and Spera & Mapelli (2017) (see also Belczynski et al. 2016b; Woosley 2017).”
• Constraints from Gravitational-wave Detections of Binary Black Hole Mergers on the 12C(α, γ)16O Rate (2020, background): “1 and ~ M20 of material in a pulsational mass loss episode (Woosley 2017; Farmer et al. 2019; Renzo et al. 2020a).”
• The cosmic merger rate of stellar black hole binaries from the Illustris simulation (2017, methodology): “Moreover, we include the effect of pulsational pair-instability and pair-instability supernovae (Woosley 2017) which were neglected in most previous studies.”
• Pre-supernova outbursts via wave heating in massive stars – I. Red supergiants (2017, background): “Additionally, pair instabilities in very massive stars (M 60 M ) may produce some outbursts and interacting SNe (Woosley 2017), but again the rarity of these events and distinct light-curve features makes them unlikely to be responsible for most Type IIn SNe.”
• The origin of spin in binary black holes (2019, background): “On the other hand, PPISNe affect pre-supernovae stars with He-core masses between around 35 and 60 M enhancing the loss of mass before the supernova event and resulting in less massive BHs (Yoshida et al. 2016; Woosley 2017; Marchant et al. 2019).”