Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T18:39:17.605Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Pair-Instability Explosions: observational evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2012

Avishay Gal-Yam
Avishay Gal-Yam*
Affiliation:
Department of Particle Physics and Astrophysics, Weizmann Institute of Science, 76100 Rehovot, Israel email: [email protected]
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

It has been theoretically predicted many decades ago that extremely massive stars that develop large oxygen cores will become dynamically unstable, due to electron-positron pair production. The collapse of such oxygen cores leads to powerful thermonuclear explosions that unbind the star and can produce, in some cases, many solar masses of radioactive 56Ni. For many years, no examples of this process were observed in nature. Here, I briefly review recent observations of luminous supernovae that likely result from pair-instability explosions, in the nearby and distant Universe.

Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 7 , Symposium S279: Death of Massive Stars: Supernovae and Gamma-Ray Bursts , April 2011 , pp. 253 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2012

References

Arcavi, I., Gal-Yam, A., Kasliwal, M. M., et al. 2010, ApJ, 721, 777CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnett, W. D. 1982, ApJ, 253, 785CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barkat, Z., Rakavy, G., & Sack, N. 1967, Physical Review Letters, 18, 379CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bond, J. R., Arnett, W. D., & Carr, B. J. 1984, ApJ, 280, 825Google Scholar
Cooke, J., et al. 2012, Nature, submittedGoogle Scholar
Filippenko, A. V., Li, W. D., Treffers, R. R., & Modjaz, M. 2001, IAU Colloq. 183: Small Telescope Astronomy on Global Scales, 246, 121Google Scholar
Gal-Yam, A., Maoz, D., Guhathakurta, P., & Filippenko, A. V. 2008, ApJ, 680, 550Google Scholar
Gal-Yam, A., Mazzali, P., Ofek, E. O., et al. 2009, Nature, 462, 624Google Scholar
Gal-Yam, A. 2012, Science, in pressGoogle Scholar
Guetta, D. & Della Valle, M. 2007, ApJ, 657, L73Google Scholar
Hatano, K., Branch, D., Nomoto, K., et al. 2001, Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 33, 838Google Scholar
Heger, A. & Woosley, S. E. 2002, ApJ, 567, 532CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knop, R., Aldering, G., Deustua, S., et al. 1999, IAUC, 7128, 1Google Scholar
Kodros, J., Cenko, S. B., Li, W., et al. 2010, Central Bureau Electronic Telegrams, 2461, 1Google Scholar
Langer, N., Norman, C. A., de Koter, A., et al. 2007, A&A, 475, L19Google Scholar
Li, W., Leaman, J., Chornock, R., et al. 2011, MNRAS, 412, 1441CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moriya, T., Tominaga, N., Tanaka, M., Maeda, K., & Nomoto, K. 2010, ApJ, 717, L83CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neill, J. D., Sullivan, M., Gal-Yam, A., et al. 2011, ApJ, 727, 15CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pan, T., Loeb, A., & Kasen, D. 2012, MNRAS, 2979Google Scholar
Podsiadlowski, P., Mazzali, P. A., Nomoto, K., Lazzati, D., & Cappellaro, E. 2004, ApJ, 607, L17CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quimby, R. M., Kulkarni, S. R., Kasliwal, M. M., et al. 2011, Nature, 474, 487CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rakavy, G. & Shaviv, G. 1967, ApJ, 148, 803CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Umeda, H. & Nomoto, K. 2008, ApJ, 673, 1014CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vinko, J., Wheeler, J. C., Chatzopoulos, E., Marion, G. H., & Caldwell, J. 2010, Central Bureau Electronic Telegrams, 2476, 1Google Scholar
Waldman, R. 2008, ApJ, 685, 1103CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yoshida, T. & Umeda, H. 2011, MNRAS, 412, L78CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, D. R., Smartt, S. J., Valenti, S., et al. 2010, A&A, 512, A70Google Scholar