On the emergence of a new instability during core-collapse of very massive stars

TL;DR

This paper investigates a new instability during the core-collapse phase of very massive stars, suggesting it could lead to inhomogeneities affecting supernova explosions and observable phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces an analytic model analyzing the stability of core-collapse in very massive stars, revealing conditions for instability and formation of inhomogeneities.

Findings

No stable collapse conditions for very massive stars.

Instability leads to inhomogeneities affecting supernova light curves.

Provides estimates for size and amount of inhomogeneities.

Abstract

The process of uniform supernovae explosions (SNe) is well investigated for all their types. However, observational data suggests that the SNe could be not spherically-symmetric. Modern multi-dimensional simulations of SNe demonstrate development of hydrodynamical instabilities during the explosion phase. But the configuration of a star and inhomogeneities prior to explosion could strongly affect how the SNe develops. In a number of papers on numerical modeling of pair-instability supernovae explosion (PISNe) considered the case when thermonuclear energy in the central region of a massive star is introduced by the series of several hot spots. It leads to the appearance of many fragments of hot matter behind the divergence shock wave. An observable manifestation of this may be the presence of peaks on light curves of gamma-ray burst associated with explosions of massive stars. The physical nature of such inhomogeneities is not evident and the number and size of spots is a conjecture. In this work, we study the possibility of formation of these inhomogeneities at the stage of the core-collapse (CC) in a massive star. To check this assumption, we chose analytic self-similar model of CC and investigated stability of solutions obtained from it with respect to small multidimensional perturbations. It shows there are no conditions where the collapse of a very massive star may remain stable, although, for a less massive star, it is possible. Using obtained relations, we found characteristic features of developing instability, thereby making it possible to estimate the amount and characteristic size of the inhomogeneities.