Filling the Black Hole Mass Gap: Avoiding Pair Instability in Massive Stars through Addition of Non-Nuclear Energy

Understand

In standard stellar evolution, stars with masses ranging from approximately $150$ to $240 M_\odot$ are expected to evolve to a pair instability supernova with no black hole (BH) remnant.

• This evolutionary behavior leads to a predicted gap in the black hole mass function from approximately $50$ to $140 M_\odot$.
• Yet the LIGO and Virgo Collaborations[1] recently discovered black holes of masses $66 M_\odot$ and $85 M_\odot$ in the gravitational wave event GW190521.
• We propose a new method to populate the BH mass gap.