Nucleosynthetic Constraints on the Mass of the Heaviest Supernovae

Abstract

Assuming a Salpeter initial mass function and taking the solar abundances as a representative sample, we explore the sensitivity of nucleosynthesis in massive stars to the truncation of supernova explosions above a certain mass. It is assumed that stars of all masses contribute to nucleosynthesis by their pre-explosive winds, but above a certain limiting main sequence mass, the presupernova star becomes a black hole and ejects nothing more. The solar abundances from oxygen to atomic mass 90 are fit quite well assuming no cut-off at all, i.e., by assuming all stars up to 120 solar masses make successful supernovae. Little degradation in the fit occurs if the upper limit is reduced to 25 solar masses. The limit can be further reduced, but the required event rate of supernovae in the remaining range rises rapidly to compensate for the lost nucleosynthesis of the more massive stars. The nucleosynthesis of the s-process declines precipitously and the production of species made in the winds, e.g., carbon, becomes unacceptably large compared with elements made in the explosion, e.g., silicon and oxygen. However, by varying uncertain physics, especially the mass loss rate for massive stars and the rate for the neon-22 to magnesium-25 reaction rate, acceptable nucleosynthesis might still be achieved with a cutoff as low as 18 solar masses. This would require a supernova frequency three times greater than the fiducial value obtained when all stars explode in order to produce the required oxygen-16. The nucleosynthesis of iron-60 and aluminum-26 is also examined.

21 pages, 1 table, 9 figures

References in corpus (3)

• The nucleosynthesis of Al26 and Fe60 in solar metallicity stars extending in mass from 11 to 120 Msun: the hydrostatic and explosive contributions
• Fallback and Black Hole Production in Massive Stars
• High Mass Star Formation. III. The Functional Form of the Submillimeter Clump Mass Function

Cited by in corpus (28)

• Core-Collapse Supernovae from 9 to 120 Solar Masses Based on Neutrino-powered Explosions
• Observational constraints on the progenitors of core-collapse supernovae : the case for missing high mass stars
• The Compactness of Presupernova Stellar Cores
• Very Low Energy Supernovae from Neutrino Mass Loss
• High Resolution Study of Presupernova Compactness
• The Search for Failed Supernovae with The Large Binocular Telescope: First Candidates
• The Galactic WC and WO stars: The impact of revised distances from Gaia DR2 and their role as massive black hole progenitors
• The Type IIP Supernova 2012aw in M95: hydrodynamical modelling of the photospheric phase from accurate spectrophotometric monitoring
• Hunting Black Holes with Gaia
• Stellar Collapse Diversity and the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background
• Missing Red Supergiants and Carbon Burning
• Tracing the Cosmic Metal Evolution in the Low-Redshift Intergalactic Medium
• Electron-capture supernovae as sources of 60Fe
• Gone without a bang: An archival HST survey for disappearing massive stars
• The Deaths of Very Massive Stars
• Code dependencies of pre-supernova evolution and nucleosynthesis in massive stars: Evolution to the end of core helium burning
• Supernova Progenitors, Their Variability, and the Type IIP Supernova ASASSN-16fq in M66
• The Black Hole Formation Probability
• Nucleosynthesis of binary-stripped stars
• Very Low Energy Supernovae: Light Curves and Spectra of Shock Breakout
• Progenitor Mass Distribution of Core-Collapse Supernova Remnants in Our Galaxy and Magellanic Clouds based on Elemental Abundances
• A new galactic chemical evolution model with dust: results for dwarf irregular galaxies and DLA systems
• The cosmic carbon footprint of massive stars stripped in binary systems
• The Impact of Black Hole Formation on Population Averaged Supernova Yields
• Constraining the final fates of massive stars by oxygen and iron enrichment history in the Galaxy
• Reducing Uncertainties in the Production of the Gamma Emitting Nuclei 26Al, 44Ti, and 60Fe in Core Collapse Supernovae by Using Effective Helium Burning Rates
• Galactic Constraints on Supernova Progenitor Models
• The impact of asymmetric neutrino emissions on nucleosynthesis in core-collapse supernovae II -- progenitor dependences --