Luminosity versus Rotation in a Supermassive Star

Abstract

We determine the effect of rotation on the luminosity of supermassive stars. We apply the Roche model to calculate analytically the emitted radiation from a uniformly rotating, radiation-dominated supermassive configuration. We find that the luminosity at maximum rotation, when mass at the equator orbits at the Kepler period, is reduced by ~36% below the usual Eddington luminosity from the corresponding nonrotating star. A supermassive star is believed to evolve in a quasistationary manner along such a maximally rotating ``mass-shedding'' sequence before reaching the point of dynamical instability; hence this reduced luminosity determines the evolutionary timescale. Our result therefore implies that the lifetime of a supermassive star prior to dynamical collapse is ~56% longer than the value typically estimated by employing the usual Eddington luminosity.

5 pages, 2 figures, uses emulateapj.sty; to appear in ApJ

References in corpus (1)

• Collapse of Primordial Gas Clouds and the Formation of Quasar Black Holes

Cited by in corpus (12)

• In the Beginning: The First Sources of Light and the Reionization of the Universe
• Titans of the Early Universe: The Prato Statement on the Origin of the First Supermassive Black Holes
• Relativistic collapse and explosion of rotating supermassive stars with thermonuclear effects
• Formation of the first stars and black holes
• Spherical collapse of supermassive stars: neutrino emission and gamma-ray bursts
• Internal Structure and Apsidal Motions of Polytropic Stars in Close Binaries
• General-relativistic instability in rapidly accreting supermassive stars: the impact of rotation
• Spectral properties and detectability of supermassive stars in protoglobular clusters at high redshift
• Simulating the Magnetorotational Collapse of Supermassive Stars: Incorporating Gas Pressure Perturbations and Different Rotation Profiles
• Maximally Rotating Supermassive Stars at the Onset of Collapse: The Perturbative Effects of Gas Pressure, Magnetic Fields, Dark Matter and Dark Energy
• Did a close tidal encounter cause the Great Dimming of Betelgeuse?
• Maximally Rotating Supermassive Stars at the Onset of Collapse: Effects of Gas Pressure