How much 56Ni can be produced in Core-Collapse Supernovae? : Evolution and Explosions of 30 - 100 Msun Stars

Understand

Motivated by the discovery of extremely bright supernovae SNe1999as and 2006gy, we have investigated how much 56Ni mass can be synthesized in core-collapse massive supernovae (SNe).

• We calculate the evolution of several very massive stars with initial masses M <~ 100 Msun from the main-sequence to the beginning of the Fe-core collapse and simulate their explosions and nucleosynthesis.
• In order to avoid complications associated with strong mass-loss, we only consider metal-poor stars with initial metallicity Z = Zsun/200.
• However, our results are applicable to higher metallicity models with similar C+O core masses.