Quark-Novae, cosmic reionization, and early r-process element production
arXiv:0811.0041 · doi:10.1088/0004-637X/702/2/1575
Abstract
We examine the case for Quark-Novae (QNe) as possible sources for the reionization and early metal enrichment of the universe. Quark-Novae are predicted to arise from the explosive collapse (and conversion) of sufficiently massive neutron stars into quark stars. A Quark-Nova (QN) can occur over a range of time scales following the supernova event. For QNe that arise days to weeks after the supernovae, we show that dual-shock that arises as the QN ejecta encounter the supernova ejecta can produce enough photons to reionize hydrogen in most of the Inter-Galactic medium (IGM) by z ~ 6. Such events can explain the large optical depth tau_e ~ 0.1 as measured by WMAP, if the clumping factor, C, of the material being ionized is smaller than 10. We suggest a way in which a normal initial mass function (IMF) for the oldest stars can be reconciled with a large optical depth as well as the mean metallicity of the early IGM post reionization. We find that QN also make a contribution to r-process element abundances for atomic numbers A > 130. We predict that the main cosmological signatures of Quark-Novae are the gamma-ray bursts that announce their birth. These will be clustered at redshifts in the range z ~ 7-8 in our model.
Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. 9 journal pages, 2 figures. This version includes more discussion, 3 new appendices and extended literature
References in corpus (71)
- Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Three Year Results: Implications for Cosmology
- How Massive Single Stars End their Life
- Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Likelihoods and Parameters from the WMAP data
- In the Beginning: The First Sources of Light and the Reionization of the Universe
- Color-Flavor Locking and Chiral Symmetry Breaking in High Density QCD
- A Comprehensive Study of Binary Compact Objects as Gravitational Wave Sources: Evolutionary Channels, Rates, and Physical Properties
- Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) First Year Observations: TE Polarization
- On the properties of massive Population III stars and metal-free stellar populations
- Observational constraints on Cosmic Reionization
- A Survey of z>5.7 Quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey II: Discovery of Three Additional Quasars at z>6
- SN 2006gy: Discovery of the most luminous supernova ever recorded, powered by the death of an extremely massive star like Eta Carinae
- Reionization of the Inhomogeneous Universe
- Pair-Instability Supernovae, Gravity Waves, and Gamma-Ray Transients
- Generic Spectrum and Ionization Efficiency of a Heavy Initial Mass Function for the First Stars
- Metallicity of the intergalactic medium using pixel statistics. II. The distribution of metals as traced by C IV
- Early Metal Enrichment of the Intergalactic Medium by Pregalactic Outflows
- Signals of the QCD phase transition in core-collapse supernovae
- Zero-Metallicity Stars and the Effects of the First Stars on Reionization
- The Minimum Universal Metal Density Between Redshifts of 1.5 and 5.5
- Radiative transfer simulations of cosmic reionization I: methodology and initial results
- Early Metal Enrichment by Pregalactic Outflows: II. Simulations of Blow-away
- On the Threshold of the Reionization Epoch
- GRB 080913 at redshift 6.7
- HE0107-5240, A Chemically Ancient Star.I. A Detailed Abundance Analysis
- Quark deconfinement and implications for the radius and the limiting mass of compact stars
- Constraints on reionization from the thermal history of the intergalactic medium
- Self-regulated reionization
- First Stars II. Elemental abundances in the extremely metal-poor star CS 22949--037: A diagnostic of early massive supernovae
- Cosmic Reionisation by Stellar Sources: Population III Stars
- Was the Universe Reionized by Massive Population-III Stars?
- The High-Redshift He II Gunn-Peterson Effect: Implications and Future Prospects
- Nucleosynthesis, Reionization, and the Mass Function of the First Stars
- Burning of an hadronic star into a quark or a hybrid star
- Astrophysical Implications of Equation of State for Hadron-Quark Mixed Phase: Compact Stars and Stellar Collapses
- Mass Ejection by Strange Star Mergers and Observational Implications
- Quark-Nova
- Reionisation, chemical enrichment and seed black holes from the first stars: is Population III important?
- Ly-alpha and UV emission from high-redshift GRB hosts: To what extent do GRBs trace star formation?
- The History and Morphology of Helium Reionization
- Determination of Nucleosynthetic Yields of Supernovae and Very Massive Stars from Abundances in Metal-Poor Stars
- Strangelet propagation and cosmic ray flux
- Reionization - A probe for the stellar population and the physics of the early universe
- On the oxygen abundance of HE0107-5240
- Neutrino Emission and Mass Ejection in Quark Novae
- Cosmic Star Formation, Reionization, and Constraints on Global Chemical Evolution
- Supernova SN2006gy as a first ever Quark Nova?
- Shear Viscosity in a CFL Quark Star
- A three stage model for the inner engine of Gamma Ray Burst: Prompt emission and early afterglow
- Background radiation from sterile neutrino decay and reionization
- Fireballs from Quark Stars in the CFL Phase: Application to Gamma Ray Bursters
- Photon Emission from Dense Quark Matter
- Quark deconfinement in neutron star cores: The effects of spin-down
- The Birthrate of Magnetars
- Inhomogeneous Helium Reionization and the Equation of State of the Intergalactic Medium
- Intergalactic HeII absorption towards QSO 1157+3143
- Nucleosynthesis in neutron-rich ejecta from quark-novae
- Viscous damping of r-mode oscillations in compact stars with quark matter
- The Ionizing Efficiency of the First Stars
- The Lack of Gamma-Ray Bursts from Population III Binaries
- Strangelets: Who is Looking, and How?
- Mutual friction in a cold color flavor locked superfluid and r-mode instabilities in compact stars
- Oxygen and Magnesium Abundance in the Ultra-Metal-Poor Giants CS22949-037 and CS29498-043: Challenges in Models of Atmospheres
- Dynamical and thermal evolution of the quark-nova ejecta
- Transition From Population III to Population II Stars
- Spectral shape of the UV ionizing background and OVI absorbers at z ~ 1.5 towards HS0747+4259
- Possible evolutionary transition from rapidly rotating neutron stars to strange stars due to spin-down
- Single and binary evolution of Population III stars and their supernovae light curves
- Photon and dilepton emission rates from high density quark matter
- Planets orbiting Quark Nova compact remnants
- The formation of the first galaxies and the transition to low-mass star formation
- Birth rates of SGRs and AXPs: delayed amplification of magnetic field
Cited by in corpus (5)
- The peculiar case of the "double-humped" super-luminous supernova SN2006oz
- A Quark-Nova in the wake of a core-collapse Supernova: a unifying model for long duration Gamma-Ray Bursts and Fast Radio Bursts
- A new model for the origin of very metal poor stars and their chemical composition
- A unified nucleosynthetic site for the production of heavy isotopes and p-nuclei
- Modeling the Light Curve and Spectra of SN 2023aew