Pair-Instability Supernovae, Gravity Waves, and Gamma-Ray Transients

By Chris L. Fryer, Stan Woosley, Alexander Heger. Astrophysical Journal, 2000

368 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Growing evidence suggests that the first generation of stars may have been quite massive (~100-300 M☉). If they retain their high mass until death, such stars will, after about 3 Myr, make pair-instability supernovae. Models for these explosions have been discussed in the literature for four decades, but very few included the effects of rotation and none employed a realistic model for neutrino trapping and transport. Both turn out to be very important, especially for those stars whose cores collapse into black holes (helium cores above about 133 M☉). We consider the complete evolution of two zero-metallicity stars of 250 and 300 M☉. Despite their large masses, we argue that the low metallicities of these stars imply negligible mass loss. Evolving the stars with no mass loss, but including angular momentum transport and rotationally induced mixing, the two stars produce helium cores of 130 and 180 M☉. Products of central helium burning (e.g., primary nitrogen) are mixed into the hydrogen envelope with dramatic effects on the radius, especially in the case of the 300 M☉ model. Explosive oxygen and silicon burning cause the 130 M☉ helium core (250 M☉ star) to explode, but explosive burning is unable to drive an explosion in the 180 M☉ helium core, and it collapses to a black hole. For this star, the calculated angular momentum in the presupernova model is sufficient to delay black hole formation, and the star initially forms an ~50 M☉, 1000 km core within which neutrinos are trapped. The calculated growth time for secular rotational instabilities in this core is shorter than the black hole formation time, and they may develop. If so, the estimated gravitational wave energy and wave amplitude are EGW ≈ 10-3 M☉ c2 and h+ ≈ 10-21/d(Gpc), but these estimates are very rough and depend sensitively on the nonlinear nature of the instabilities. After the black hole forms, accretion continues through a disk. The mass of the disk depends on the adopted viscosity but may be quite large, up to 30 M☉ when the black hole mass is 140 M☉. The accretion rate through the disk can be as large as 1-10 M☉ s-1. Although the disk is far too large and cool to transport energy efficiently to the rotational axis by neutrino annihilation, it has ample potential energy to produce a 1054 erg jet driven by magnetic fields. The interaction of this jet with surrounding circumstellar gas may produce an energetic gamma-ray transient, but given the probable redshift and the consequent timescale and spectrum, this model may have difficulty explaining typical gamma-ray bursts.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c7d5223aac569911222ee654776b8ec088566e47

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Citations in the corpus

ASTROPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE BINARY BLACK HOLE MERGER GW150914 (2016, background): “…stars also supports the idea that PopIII stars may produce even more massive BHs, unless they The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 818:L22 (15pp), 2016 February 20 Abbott et al. become so massive that they are completely disrupted by pairinstability SNe (e.g., Fryer et al. 2001; Woosley et al. 2007).”
Effects of rotation on the evolution of primordial stars (2008, methodology): “Note that the limits above are obtained by non-rotating models, and they may not be appropriate for rotating models, as shown by Fryer et al. (2001).”
Merging black hole binaries: the effects of progenitor's metallicity, mass-loss rate and Eddington factor (2017, background): “In particular, it is crucial to assess what are the conditions for a star to directly collapse into a BH, without an explosion (e.g. Bethe 1990; Fryer 1999; Fryer et al. 2001; Janka et al. 2007; O’Connor & Ott 2011; Janka 2012; Burrows 2013; Ertl et al. 2016).”
Supermassive Stars in Quasar Disks (2003, background): “200M⊙ (BAC) but complete collapse to a black hole if M∗ & 300M⊙ (Fryer et al. 2001).”
Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics ( ): Convective Boundaries, Element Diffusion, and Massive Star Explosions (2017, background): “A single energetic burst from nuclear burning can disrupt the entire star without leaving a black hole remnant behind to produce a pair-instability supernova (Ober et al. 1983; Fryer et al. 2001; Scannapieco et al. 2005; Kasen et al. 2011; Chatzopoulos et al. 2013).”
Evolutionary roads leading to low effective spins, high black hole masses, and O1/O2 rates for LIGO/Virgo binary black holes (2017, background): “…star and on the remnant BH mass (Woosley 2017; Limongi & Chieffi 2018; Belczynski et al. 2020), while the upper mass limit corresponds to the end of the pair-instability supernova process, that is believed to disrupt the entire star without BH formation (Fryer et al. 2001; Heger & Woosley 2002).”
FORMATION OF THE FIRST NUCLEAR CLUSTERS AND MASSIVE BLACK HOLES AT HIGH REDSHIFT (2008, background): “If zero metallicity very massive stars form above 260 M⊙, they will rapidly collapse to BHs with little mass loss (Fryer et al. 2001), leaving behind BHs with masses ≃ 102 M⊙ (Madau & Rees 2001).”
Constraints from Gravitational-wave Detections of Binary Black Hole Mergers on the 12C(α, γ)16O Rate (2020, background): “Given the uncertain mechanism of black hole formation (Fryer 1999; Fryer et al. 2001, 2012), or weak shock generation (Nadezhin 1980; Lovegrove & Woosley 2013; Fernández et al. 2018), our black holes masses are upper limits.”
How Massive Single Stars End Their Life (2002, background): “Above 260 M , the stars directly collapse to a black hole (Fryer et al. 2001; Heger & Woosley 2002).”