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

Nature Astronomy volume 2, pages 980–986 (2018)Cite this article

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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 have 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 modelling 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 light curves, from peculiar type II supernovae to superluminous events. The remnants are neutron stars with a quark matter core, known as hybrid stars, of about 2 M⊙ at birth. A Galactic event of this kind could be observable owing to the release of a second neutrino burst. Its observation would confirm such a first-order phase transition at densities relevant for astrophysics.

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Fig. 1: Hybrid EOS, phase diagram and supernova evolution.
Fig. 2: Simulation of the evolution of a supernova.
Fig. 3: Bolometric light curve of the supernova simulation launched from the 50 M⊙ ZAMS star with the hadron–quark phase transition.
Fig. 4: Neutrinos from the supernova simulation of the 50 M⊙ ZAMS star with the hadron–quark phase transition at tc after the core bounce.

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Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study, including the hadron–quark hybrid EOS, are available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to K.-J. Chen for discussions about possible implications regarding the supernova light curve, H. Umeda for details of the stellar model used in this work, and A. Yudin for helpful discussions regarding neutrino processes. The supernova simulations were performed at the Wroclaw Center for Networking and Supercomputing. The authors acknowledge support from the Polish National Science Center under grant numbers UMO-2016/23/B/ST2/00720 (to T.F. and N.-U.F.B.) and DEC-2011/02/A/ST2/00306 (to T.F., N.-U.F.B. and D.B.B.), Russian Science Foundation under grant numbers 16–12–10519 (to P.B. and E.S.) and 18–12–00522 (to S.B.) and Ministry of Science and Technology (Taiwan) under grant number 107-2119-M-001-038 (to M.-R.W.). D.B.B. is further supported by the MEPhI Academic Excellence Project under contract number 02.a03.21.0005, and S.T. acknowledges the DFG through grant SFB1245. This work was supported by the COST Actions CA15213 (THOR), CA16117 (ChETEC) and CA16214 (PHAROS).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland

    Tobias Fischer, Niels-Uwe F. Bastian & David B. Blaschke

  2. Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

    Meng-Ru Wu

  3. Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

    Meng-Ru Wu

  4. National Research Center Kurchatov Institute, A.I. Alikhanov Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Moscow, Russia

    Petr Baklanov, Elena Sorokina & Sergei Blinnikov

  5. National Research Nuclear University Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, Moscow, Russia

    Petr Baklanov & David B. Blaschke

  6. Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia

    Elena Sorokina

  7. Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Chiba, Japan

    Sergei Blinnikov

  8. Institut für Kernphysik, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Stefan Typel

  9. GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung, Darmstadt, Germany

    Stefan Typel

  10. Department of Physics and Astronomy, California State University, Long Beach, CA, USA

    Thomas Klähn

  11. Bogoliubov Laboratory for Theoretical Physics, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia

    David B. Blaschke

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Contributions

All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript. T.F. wrote the paper, implemented the hadron–quark EOS in the supernova model, performed all the supernova simulations and analysed the corresponding results. N.-U.F.B., D.B.B. and T.K. developed the new quark EOS and the extension to finite temperatures and arbitrary isospin asymmetry. S.T. provided the hadronic EOS selected for this study. M.-R.W. performed the neutrino detection analysis and nucleosynthesis calculations for the prediction of the elemental yields. P.B., E.S. and S.B. performed the light curve analysis. All authors commented on the manuscript draft.

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Correspondence to Tobias Fischer.

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Fischer, T., Bastian, NU.F., Wu, MR. et al. Quark deconfinement as a supernova explosion engine for massive blue supergiant stars. Nat Astron 2, 980–986 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-018-0583-0

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