paper

Quark deconfinement as supernova explosion engine for massive blue-supergiant stars

arXiv:1712.08788 · doi:10.1038/s41550-018-0583-0

Abstract

Blue-supergiant stars develop into core-collapse supernovae --- one of the most energetic outbursts in the universe --- when all nuclear burning fuel is exhausted in the stellar core. Previous attempts failed to explain observed explosions of such stars which have a zero-age main sequence mass of 50~M or more. Here we exploit the largely uncertain state of matter at high density, and connect the modeling of such stellar explosions with a first-order phase transition from nuclear matter to the quark-gluon plasma. The resulting energetic supernova explosions can account for a large variety of lightcurves, from peculiar type II to super-luminous events. The remnants are neutron stars with quark matter core, known as hybrid stars, of about 2~M at birth. A galactic event of this kind could be observable due to the release of a second neutrino burst. Its observation would confirm such a first-order phase transition at densities relevant for astrophysics.

28 pages, 6 figures

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