Related papers: Finding the First Cosmic Explosions. III. Pulsatio…
Observational identification of the first stars is one of the great challenges in the modern astronomy. Although a single first star is too faint to be detected, supernova explosions of the first stars can be bright enough. An important…
Stars with helium cores between ~64 and 133 M_sun are theoretically predicted to die as pair-instability supernovae. This requires very massive progenitors, which are theoretically prohibited for Pop II/I stars within the Galactic stellar…
For the initial mass range (140 < M < 260 Msun) stars die in a thermonuclear runaway triggered by the pair-production instability. The supernovae they make can be remarkably energetic (up to ~10^53 ergs) and synthesize considerable amounts…
Stars with masses of 80 - 130 Msun can encounter the pulsational pair-instability at the end of their lives, which triggers consecutive episodes of explosive burning that eject multiple massive shells. Collisions between these shells…
Understanding the properties of Pop III stars is prerequisite to elucidating the nature of primeval galaxies, the chemical enrichment and reionization of the early IGM, and the origin of supermassive black holes. While the primordial IMF…
In certain mass ranges, massive stars can undergo a violent pulsation triggered by the electron/positron pair instability that ejects matter, but does not totally disrupt the star. After one or more of these pulsations, such stars are…
Pulsars are neutron stars, stellar corpses left over after supernova explosions of stars about ten times as massive as our Sun, with densities comparable to the atomic nucleus', spinning with periods from few milliseconds up to few seconds,…
We have entered the era of explosive transient astronomy, in which upcoming real-time surveys like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) and Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System…
Current numerical studies suggest that the first galaxies formed a few stars at a time and were enriched only gradually by the first heavy elements. However, the large box sizes in these models cannot resolve primordial supernova explosions…
The first stars ended the cosmic Dark Ages and created the first heavy elements necessary for the formation of planets and life. The properties of these stars remain uncertain, and it may be decades before individual Pop III stars are…
The extremely luminous supernova SN 2006gy 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…
Recent observations have successfully detected UV-bright and infrared-bright galaxies in the epoch of reionization. However, the origin of their radiative properties has not been understood yet. Combining cosmological hydrodynamic…
Pair Instability Supernovae have been suggested as candidates for some Super Luminous Supernovae, such as SN 2007bi, and as one of the dominant types of explosion occurring in the early Universe from massive, zero-metallicity Population III…
Recent stellar evolution models show consistently that very massive metal-free stars evolve into red supergiants shortly before they explode. We argue that the envelopes of these stars, which will form pair-instability supernovae, become…
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…
The progenitors of Type Ia and some core collapse supernovae are thought to be stars in binary systems, but little observational evidence exists to confirm the hypothesis. We suggest that the collision of the supernova ejecta with its…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the ultimate cosmic lighthouses, capable of illuminating the universe at its earliest epochs. Could such events probe the properties of the first stars at z $\sim$ 20, the end of the cosmic Dark Ages? Previous…
We present numerical simulations of primordial supernovae in cosmological minihalos at $z \sim$ 20. We consider Type II supernovae, hypernovae, and pair instability supernovae (PISN) in halos from 6.9 $\times$ 10$^5$ - 1.2 $\times$ 10$^7$…
Current models suggest gamma-ray bursts could be used as a way of probing Population III stars - the first stars in the early Universe. In this paper we use numerical simulations to demonstrate that late time radio observations of gamma-ray…
The origin of high-redshift quasars and their supermassive black hole engines is unclear. One promising solution is the collapse of a primordial supermassive star. Observational confirmation of this scenario may be challenging, but a…