Pulsational Pair-Instability Supernovae

Abstract

The final evolution of stars in the mass range 70 - 140 solar masses is explored. Depending upon their mass loss history and rotation rates, these stars will end their lives as pulsational pair-instability supernovae producing a great variety of observational transients with total durations ranging from weeks to millennia and luminosities from 10${}^{41}$ to over 10${}^{44}$ erg s${}^{-1}$. No non-rotating model radiates more than $5\times 10^{50}$ erg of light or has a kinetic energy exceeding $5\times 10^{51}$ erg, but greater energies are possible, in principle, in magnetar-powered explosions which are explored. Many events resemble Type Ibn, Icn, and IIn supernovae, and some potential observational counterparts are mentioned. Some PPISN can exist in a dormant state for extended periods, producing explosions millennia after their first violent pulse. These dormant supernovae contain bright Wolf-Rayet stars, possibly embedded in bright x-ray and radio sources. The relevance of PPISN to supernova impostors like Eta Carinae, to super-luminous supernovae, and to sources of gravitational radiation is discussed. No black holes between 52 and 133 solar masses are expected from stellar evolution in close binaries.

39 pages, 28 figures, submitted to Astrophysical Journal, Aug. 31, 2016. Revised and accepted Jan. 2, 2017

References in corpus (29)

• Neutron Star Observations: Prognosis for Equation of State Constraints
• Nucleosynthesis and Remnants in Massive Stars of Solar Metallicity
• Pulsational pair instability as an explanation for the most luminous supernovae
• Nucleosynthetic signatures of the first stars
• A giant outburst two years before the core-collapse of a massive star
• SN 2006jc: A Wolf-Rayet Star Exploding in a Dense He-Rich Circumstellar Medium
• Magnetorotational Core-Collapse Supernovae in Three Dimensions
• The Landscape of the Neutrino Mechanism of Core-Collapse Supernovae: Neutron Star and Black Hole Mass Functions, Explosion Energies and Nickel Yields
• Low-Mass Binary Induced Outflows from Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars
• Massive stars exploding in a He-rich circumstellar medium. I. Type Ibn (SN 2006jc-like) events
• How much 56Ni can be produced in Core-Collapse Supernovae? : Evolution and Explosions of 30 - 100 Msun Stars
• Light Curve Modeling of Superluminous Supernova 2006gy: Collision between Supernova Ejecta and Dense Circumstellar Medium
• Pair creation supernovae at low and high redshift
• The VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey XVII. Physical and wind properties of massive stars at the top of the main sequence
• The Proto-neutron Star Phase of the Collapsar Model and the Route to Long-soft Gamma-ray Bursts and Hypernovae
• An upper limit to the energy of gamma-ray bursts indicates that GRB/SNe are powered by magnetars
• A Blast Wave from the 1843 Eruption of Eta Carinae
• Massive stars exploding in a He-rich circumstellar medium. II. The transitional case of SN 2005la
• Late-Type Red Supergiants: Too Cool for the Magellanic Clouds?
• Massive stars exploding in a He-rich circumstellar medium. IV. Transitional Type Ibn Supernovae
• X-ray illumination of the ejecta of Supernova 1987A
• A consistent solution for the velocity field and mass-loss rate of massive stars
• Very Massive Stars in the Local Universe
• A Global Model of The Light Curves and Expansion Velocities of Type II-Plateau Supernovae
• Spectral and morphological analysis of the remnant of Supernova 1987A with ALMA & ATCA
• The Deaths of Very Massive Stars
• Nonlinear Saturation of g-modes in Proto-Neutron Stars: Quieting the Acoustic Engine
• Ancient eruptions of Eta Carinae: A tale written in proper motions
• Massive stars dying alone: The extremely remote environment of SN 2009ip

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Endurance of SN 2005ip after a decade: X-rays, radio, and H-alpha like SN 1988Z require long-lived pre-supernova mass loss
• Possible pair-instability supernovae at solar metallicity from magnetic stellar progenitors