Pair-Instability Supernovae in the Local Universe

Abstract

The discovery of 150 - 300 M${}_{\odot }$ stars in the Local Group and pair-instability supernova candidates at low redshifts has excited interest in this exotic explosion mechanism. Realistic light curves for pair-instability supernovae at near-solar metallicities are key to identifying and properly interpreting these events as more are found. We have modeled pair-instability supernovae of 150 - 500 M${}_{\odot }$ Z $\sim$ 0.1 - 0.4 Z${}_{\odot }$ stars. These stars lose up to 80% of their mass to strong line-driven winds and explode as bare He cores. We find that their light curves and spectra are quite different from those of Population III pair-instability explosions, which therefore cannot be used as templates for low-redshift events. Although non-zero metallicity pair-instability supernovae are generally dimmer than their Population III counterparts, in some cases they will be bright enough to be detected at the earliest epochs at which they can occur, the formation of the first galaxies at $z\sim$ 10 - 15. Others can masquerade as dim, short duration supernovae that are only visible in the local universe and that under the right conditions could be hidden in a wide variety of supernova classes. We also report for the first time that some pair-instability explosions can create black holes with masses of $\sim$ 100 M${}_{\odot }$.

16 pages, 15 figures, submitted to ApJ, revised in response to comments by the referee

References in corpus (25)

• The R136 star cluster hosts several stars whose individual masses greatly exceed the accepted 150 Msun stellar mass limit
• The empirical metallicity dependence of the mass-loss rate of O- and early B-type stars
• Population III stars: hidden or disappeared ?
• The Destruction of Cosmological Minihalos by Primordial Supernovae
• Super-luminous supernovae at redshifts of 2.05 and 3.90
• The HII Region of a Primordial Star
• Pair creation supernovae at low and high redshift
• Fallback Supernovae: A Possible Origin of Peculiar Supernovae with Extremely Low Explosion Energies
• How the First Stars Regulated Local Star Formation I: Radiative Feedback
• How Very Massive Metal Free Stars Start Cosmological Reionization
• Ionization Front Instabilities in Primordial H II Regions
• Two-Dimensional Simulations of Pulsational Pair-Instability Supernovae
• Observational properties of low redshift pair instability supernovae
• General Relativistic Instability Supernova of a Supermassive Population III Star
• Pair Instability Supernovae of Very Massive Population III Stars
• Three-Dimensional Dynamical Instabilities in Galactic Ionization Fronts
• Explosion and nucleosynthesis of low redshift pair instability supernovae
• Finding the First Cosmic Explosions. III. Pulsational Pair-Instability Supernovae
• Probing the stellar initial mass function with high-$z$ supernovae
• The impact of reionization on the formation of supermassive black hole seeds
• The Molecular Hydrogen Deficit in Gamma-Ray Burst Afterglows
• The First Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Universe
• Light Curve Calculations of Supernovae from Fallback Gamma-Ray Bursts
• The Effects on Supernova Shock Breakout and Swift Light Curves Due to the Mass of the Hydrogen-Rich Envelope
• Detecting Ancient Supernovae at z ~ 5 - 12 with CLASH

Cited by in corpus (26)

• Superluminous supernovae
• Protostars: Forges of cosmic rays?
• Spectra of Hydrogen-Poor Superluminous Supernovae from the Palomar Transient Factory
• Nebular spectra of pair-instability supernovae
• Can pair-instability supernova models match the observations of superluminous supernovae?
• Pair-Instability Supernova Simulations: Progenitor Evolution, Explosion, and Light Curves
• The James Webb Space Telescope North Ecliptic Pole Time-Domain Field -- I: Field Selection of a JWST Community Field for Time-Domain Studies
• How the First Stars Regulated Star Formation. II. Enrichment by Nearby Supernovae
• Revealing the binary origin of Type Ic superluminous supernovae through nebular hydrogen emission
• Properties of magnetars mimicking 56Ni-powered light curves in Type Ic superluminous supernovae
• Detecting Pair-Instability Supernovae at z<5 with the James Webb Space Telescope
• Detecting strongly lensed supernovae at z ~ 5-7 with LSST
• Wind properties of Milky Way and SMC massive stars: empirical Z dependence from CMFGEN models
• The Role of Inhomogeneities in Supernova Shock Breakout Emission
• Searches for Population III pair-instability supernovae: Predictions for ULTIMATE-Subaru and WFIRST
• Potential signature of Population III pair-instability supernova ejecta in the BLR gas of the most distant quasar at z = 7.54
• How much radioactive nickel does ASASSN-15lh require?
• Scientific Goals of the Kunlun Infrared Sky Survey (KISS)
• Gas Dynamics of the Nickel-56 Decay Heating in Pair-Instability Supernovae
• Physics of Superluminous Supernovae
• The Neutrino Signal From Pair Instability Supernovae
• Constraints on the rate of supernovae lasting for more than a year from Subaru/Hyper Suprime-Cam
• Metal-enriched Pair-instability supernovae: Effects of rotation
• Progress in Nuclear Astrophysics of East and Southeast Asia
• The neutrino emission from thermal processes in very massive stars in the local universe
• Type Ia Supernovae from First-generation Stars