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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]
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Abstract

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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

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