POPULATION III HYPERNOVAE

Abstract

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. Until now, hypernovae, the unusually energetic Type Ib/c supernovae that are sometimes associated with gamma-ray bursts, have been overlooked as cosmic beacons at the highest redshifts. In this, the latest of a series of studies on Population III supernovae, we present numerical simulations of 25-50 M {sub ☉} hypernovae and their light curves done with the Los Alamos RAGE and SPECTRUM codes. We find that they will be visible at z = 10-15 to the James Webb Space Telescope and z = 4-5 to the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, tracing star formation rates in the first galaxies and at the end of cosmological reionization. If, however, the hypernova crashes into a dense shell ejected by its progenitor, it is expected that a superluminous event will occur that may be seen at z ∼ 20 in the first generation of stars.