The Nucleosynthetic Signature of Population III

By Alexander Heger, Stan Woosley. 2001

1,254 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Growing evidence suggests that the first generation of stars may have been quite massive (~100-300 M☉). Could these stars have left a distinct nucleosynthetic signature? We explore the nucleosynthesis of helium cores in the mass range MHe = 64-133 M☉, corresponding to main-sequence star masses of approximately 140-260 M☉. Above MHe = 133 M☉, without rotation and using current reaction rates, a black hole is formed, and no nucleosynthesis is ejected. For lighter helium core masses, ~40-63 M☉, violent pulsations occur, induced by the pair instability and accompanied by supernova-like mass ejection, but the star eventually produces a large iron core in hydrostatic equilibrium. It is likely that this core, too, collapses to a black hole, thus cleanly separating the heavy-element nucleosynthesis of pair instability supernovae from those of other masses, both above and below. Indeed, black hole formation is a likely outcome for all Population III stars with main-sequence masses between about 25 and 140 M☉ (MHe = 9-63 M☉) as well as those above 260 M☉. Nucleosynthesis in pair instability supernovae varies greatly with the mass of the helium core. This core determines the maximum temperature reached during the bounce. At the upper range of exploding core masses, a maximum of 57 M☉ of 56Ni is produced, making these the most energetic and the brightest thermonuclear explosions in the universe. Integrating over a distribution of masses, we find that pair instability supernovae produce a roughly solar distribution of nuclei having even nuclear charge (Si, S, Ar, etc.) but are remarkably deficient in producing elements with odd nuclear charge—Na, Al, P, V, Mn, etc. This is because there is no stage of stable post-helium burning to set the neutron excess. Also, essentially no elements heavier than zinc are produced owing to a lack of s- and r-processes. The Fe/Si ratio is quite sensitive to whether the upper bound on the initial mass function is over 260 M☉ or somewhere between 140 and 260 M☉. When the yields of pair instability supernovae are combined with reasonable estimates of the nucleosynthesis of Population III stars from 12 to 40 M☉, this distinctive pattern of deficient production of odd-Z elements persists. Some possible strategies for testing our predictions are discussed.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b091f9fb6a3946d5a0259bc5d2ecf829f2f6b0ec

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Citations in the corpus

• The Detectability of the First Stars and Their Cluster Enrichment Signatures (2003, background): “The IMF-averaged yields, Y i , and the number of progenitors per unit stellar mass formed,N , can be obtained from expressions equivalent to equations (2) and (3) with the assumed IMF and metal yields from Heger & Woosley (2002).”
• The first stars: formation of binaries and small multiple systems (2009, background): “If multiple star formation were common in Pop III, then the occurrence of pair-instability supernovae (PISNe) might be significantly reduced, since stars that explode as PISNe must be in the higher mass range (140 M⊙ M∗ 260 M⊙, Heger & Woosley 2002).”
• The R136 star cluster hosts several stars whose individual masses greatly exceed the accepted 150 M⊙ stellar mass limit (2010, background): “They would undergo an electron–positron pair-instability explosion during the advanced stages that would trigger the complete disruption of the star (Heger & Woosley 2002).”
• The Unprecedented Third Outburst of SN 2009ip: A Luminous Blue Variable Becomes a Supernova (2012, background): “For example, since the quiescent progenitor was thought to be a very massive star of 50–80M⊙ (Smith et al. 2010b), it is close to the regime where the pulsational pair instability could occur (Heger & Woosley 2002; Heger et al. 2003; Chatzopolous & Wheeler 2012).”
• The transition from population III to population II-I star formation (2010, background): “…it is reasonably well established that the very first generation of stars should be characterized by massive objects with typical masses much larger than the presently observedon s (Schwarzschild & Spitzer 1953; Woosley & Weaver 1995; Larson 1998; Chiosi 2000; Heger & Woosley 2002, 2008).”
• Massive black hole seeds from low angular momentum material (2003, background): “This is an unknown quantity, but the mass loss is typically assumed to be in the range 10–90 per cent of the initial mass of the object (Barafee et al. 2001; Heger & Woosley 2002; Shapiro & Shibata 2002).”
• Binary Black Hole Population Properties Inferred from the First and Second Observing Runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo (2018, background): “This might be expected as a consequence of a different supernova type, called the (pulsational) pair-instability supernova(Heger & Woosley 2002; Belczynski et al. 2016a; Spera & Mapelli 2017; Woosley 2017; Marchant et al. 2018).”
• 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).”
• The First Stars: Mass Growth Under Protostellar Feedback (2011, background): “Only stars in the mass range of 140 M⊙ < M∗ < 260 M⊙ are predicted to explode as pair-instability supernovae (PISNe; Heger & Woosley 2002), c© 2011 RAS while stars with masses in the range 40 M⊙ < M∗ < 140 M⊙ are thought to collapse directly into black holes.”
• Luminous blue variable eruptions and related transients: diversity of progenitors and outburst properties (2010, background): “Heger & Woosley (2002) have described a type of severe mass-loss event known as pulsational pair-instability (PPI) ejections, when a very massive star can eject of order 10 M⊙ in an explosive but non-terminal event.”
• Formation of Supermassive Black Hole Seeds (2016, background): “However, Pop III stars with masses between 25-140 M⊙ and above 260 M⊙ are expected to directly collapse into a BH (Heger & Woosley 2002; Heger et al. 2003).”
• SIMULATIONS ON A MOVING MESH: THE CLUSTERED FORMATION OF POPULATION III PROTOSTARS (2011, background): “Pop III stars are therefore less likely to reach masses in excess of ∼ 140M⊙, the threshold for triggering extremely energetic pair-instability supernovae (PISNe) during stellar death (Heger & Woosley 2002).”
• Second-Generation Objects in the Universe: Radiative Cooling and Collapse of Halos with Virial Temperatures above 104 K (2001, background): “…considered by van den Bosch et al. (2001), metal line cooling is absent, and a possibly topheavy IMF results in more intense ionizing radiation (Bromm, Kudritzki, & Loeb 2001b) once internal star formation is underway and is also more likely to produce hypernovae explosions (Heger & Woosley 2002).”
• Massive stars exploding in a He-rich circumstellar medium. I. Type Ibn (SN 2006jc-like) events (2008, background): “Recently, Smith et al. (2007) and Langer et al. (2007) proposed that the bright type IIn SN 2006gy (see also Ofek et al. 2007) might be a pair-creation SN (PCSN), an exotic event produced by the explosion of a very massive star (more than 100M⊙ , Heger & Woosley 2002).”
• Merging black hole binaries: the effects of progenitor's metallicity, mass-loss rate and Eddington factor (2017, background): “S R ] 9 N ov 2 and barely understood (e.g. Fryer 1999; Heger & Woosley 2002; Heger et al. 2003; Fryer 2006; O’Connor & Ott 2011; Fryer et al. 2012; Janka 2012; Burrows 2013; Pejcha & Prieto 2015; Woosley 2017).”
• The first galaxies : assembly, cooling and the onset of turbulence (2008, background): “Even though studies of stellar evolution have shown that primordial stars may explode as energetic SNe, we here c© 0000 RAS, MNRAS 000, 000–000 assume that all Pop III.1 stars collapse directly to BHs (Heger & Woosley 2002; Heger et al. 2003).”
• Two populations of metal-free stars in the early Universe (2006, background): “Another argument focuses on the abundance patterns of metal-poor Galactic halo stars, as they indicate prior enrichment by conventional core-collapse SNe instead of PISNe (e.g. Heger & Woosley 2002; Umeda & Nomoto 2002, 2003, 2005; Tumlinson et al. 2004).”