1. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, UCSC, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA
2. ITEP, 117218 Moscow, Russia
3. Max Planck Institut für Astrophysik, Garching, D-85741, Germany
4. Theoretical Astrophysics Group, T-6, MS B227, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87544, USA

Correspondence to: S. E. Woosley¹ Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to S.E.W. (Email: woosley@ucolick.org).

Abstract

The extremely luminous supernova SN 2006gy (ref. 1) challenges the traditional view that the collapse of a stellar core is the only mechanism by which a massive star makes a supernova, because it seems too luminous by more than a factor of ten. Here we report that the brightest supernovae in the modern Universe arise from collisions between shells of matter ejected by massive stars that undergo an interior instability arising from the production of electron–positron pairs². This 'pair instability' leads to explosive burning that is insufficient to unbind the star, but ejects many solar masses of the envelope. After the first explosion, the remaining core contracts and searches for a stable burning state. When the next explosion occurs, several solar masses of material are again ejected, which collide with the earlier ejecta. This collision can radiate 10⁵⁰ erg of light, about a factor of ten more than an ordinary supernova. Our model is in good agreement with the observed light curve for SN 2006gy and also shows that some massive stars can produce more than one supernova-like outburst.

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