Evolution and explosions of metal-enriched supermassive stars: proton rich general relativistic instability supernovae

The assembly of supermassive black holes poses a challenge primarily because of observed quasars at high redshift, but additionally because of the current lack of observations of intermediate mass black holes. One plausible scenario for creating supermassive black holes is direct collapse triggered by the merger of two gas-rich galaxies. This scenario allows the creation of supermassive stars with solar metallicity. We investigate the behaviour of metal enriched supermassive stars which collapse due to the general relativistic radial instability during hydrogen burning. These stars contain both hydrogen and metals and thus may explode due to the CNO cycle (carbon-nitrogen-oxygen) and the rp process (rapid proton capture). We perform a suite of stellar evolution simulations for a range of masses and metallicities, with and without mass-loss. We e v aluate the stability of these supermassive stars by solving the pulsation equation in general relativity. When the stars becomes unstable, we perform 1D general relativistic hydrodynamical simulations coupled to a 153 isotope nuclear network with cooling from neutrino reactions, in order to determine if the stars explode. If the stars do explode, we post process the nucleosynthesis using a 514 isotope network which includes additional proton rich isotopes. These explosions are characterized by enhanced nitrogen and intermediate mass elements (16 = A = 25), and suppressed light elements (8 = A = 14), and we comment on recent observations of super-solar nitrogen in GN-z11.

Automated summary

The assembly of supermassive black holes is challenging due to the presence of quasars at high redshift and the lack of observations of intermediate mass black holes. Direct collapse triggered by the merger of gas-rich galaxies is a plausible scenario for creating supermassive black holes. We investigate the behavior of metal-enriched supermassive stars collapsing due to relativistic radial instability during hydrogen burning. These stars contain both hydrogen and metals and may explode through nuclear reactions, which we simulate through stellar evolution and general relativistic hydrodynamical simulations.