2017/12/31 by Tobias Fischer, Niels-Uwe F. Bastian, Meng-Ru Wu +6 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Deconfinement #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Neutrino Physics Research #Neutron star #Nuclear matter #Observable #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Stars #Strange matter #Supergiant #Supernova #astro-ph.HE #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41550-018-0583-0
published as Nature Astronomy (2018) · 28 pages, 6 figures
openalex publication_date 2018/10/16 · openalex created_date 2018/10/26 · arxiv created 2018/10/27 · arxiv updated 2018/11/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
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 failed to explain observed explosions of such stars which have a zero-age main sequence mass of 50~M_\odot or more. Here we exploit the largely uncertain state of matter at high density, and connect the modeling 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 lightcurves, from peculiar type II to super-luminous events. The remnants are neutron stars with quark matter core, known as hybrid stars, of about 2~M_\odot at birth. A galactic event of this kind could be observable due to the release of a second neutrino burst. Its observation would confirm such a first-order phase transition at densities relevant for astrophysics.