Related papers: Detecting Pair-Instability Supernovae at z<5 with …

Current surveys are underway to utilize gravitational lensing by galaxy clusters with Einstein radii >35" in the search for the highest redshift galaxies. Associated supernova from the epoch of reionization would have their fluxes boosted…

Stars with initial masses 10 M_{solar} < M_{initial} < 100 M_{solar} fuse progressively heavier elements in their centres, up to inert iron. The core then gravitationally collapses to a neutron star or a black hole, leading to an explosion…

We present James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations of four Luminous Red Novae (LRNe): dusty, extragalactic transients from stellar mergers following common-envelope evolution (CEE) in massive binary stars. Our targets - AT2021blu,…

We present a novel approach aimed at identifying the key chemical elements to search for the (missing) descendants of very massive first stars exploding as Pair Instability Supernovae (PISN). Our simple and general method consists in a…

The first stars in the history of the Universe are likely to form in the dense central regions of 10^5-10^6 Msolar cold dark matter halos at z=10-50. The annihilation of dark matter particles in these environments may lead to the formation…

Transient astronomy in the early, high-redshift (z > 3) Universe is an unexplored regime that offers the possibility of probing the first stars and the Epoch of Reionization. During Cycles 1 and 2 of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST),…

Very massive stars (VMS) up to 200-300 $M_\odot$ have been found in the Local Universe. If they would lose little mass they produce intermediate-mass black holes or pair-instability supernovae (PISNe). Until now, VMS modellers have…

Very massive stars are radiation pressure dominated. Before running out of viable nuclear fuel, they can reach a thermodynamic state where electron-positron pair-production robs them of radiation support, triggering their collapse.…

Using observed star formation rates at redshifts up to z ~ 5, we calculate cosmic supernova rates for core collapse and Type Ia supernovae. Together with supernova statistics and detailed light curves, we estimate the number of supernovae,…

Population III supernovae have been of growing interest of late for their potential to directly probe the properties of the first stars, particularly the most energetic events that are visible near the edge of the observable universe. But…

Pair-instability and pulsational pair-instability supernovae (PPISN) have not been unambiguously observed so far. They are, however, promising candidates for the progenitors of the heaviest binary black hole (BBH) mergers detected. If these…

Very massive stars (VMSs, $M_{\star}$ $\geq$ 100 M$_{\odot}$) play a crucial role in several astrophysical processes. At low metallicity, they might collapse directly into black holes, or end their lives as pair-instability supernovae.…

Observational evidence suggests that some very massive stars in the local Universe may die as pair-instability supernovae. We present 2D simulations of the pair-instability supernova of a non-zero metallicity star. We find that very little…

Observations of high-redshift supernovae (SNe) open a novel opportunity to study the massive star population in the early Universe. We study the detectability of superluminous SNe with upcoming optical and near-infrared (NIR) surveys. Our…

Primordial stars are key to primeval structure formation as the first stellar components of primeval galaxies, the sources of cosmic chemical enrichment and likely cosmic reionization, and they possibly gave rise to the supermassive black…

The issue of which stars may reach the conditions of electron/positron pair formation instability is of importance to understand the final evolution both of the first stars and of contemporary stars. The criterion to enter the pair…

Luminous high-redshift quasars can be used to probe of the intergalactic medium (IGM) in the early universe because their UV light is absorbed by the neutral hydrogen along the line of sight. They help us to measure the neutral hydrogen…

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 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…

While the modern stellar IMF shows a rapid decline with increasing mass, theoretical investigations suggest that very massive stars (>100 solar masses) may have been abundant in the early universe. Other calculations also indicate that,…