Quark deconfinement as supernova explosion engine for massive blue-supergiant stars
T. Fischer, N.-U. F. Bastian, M.-R. Wu, et. al., 2018 arXiv:1712.08788 2 980Blue supergiant stars develop into core-collapse supernovae—one of the most energetic outbursts in the Universe—when all nuclear burning fuel is exhausted in the stellar core. Previous attempts have failed to explain observed explosions of such stars, which have a zero-age main-sequence mass of 50 M⊙⊙ or more. Here, we exploit the largely uncertain state of matter at high density, and connect the modelling of such stellar explosions with a first-order phase transition from nuclear matter to the quark–gluon plasma. The resulting energetic supernova explosions can account for a large variety of light curves, from peculiar type II supernovae to superluminous events. The remnants are neutron stars with a quark matter core, known as hybrid stars, of about 2 M⊙⊙ at birth. A Galactic event of this kind could be observable owing to the release of a second neutrino burst. Its observation would confirm such a first-order phase transition at densities relevant for astrophysics.