QCD phase transition drives supernova explosion of a very massive star

Understand

The nature of core-collapse supernova (SN) explosions is yet incompletely understood.

• The present article revisits the scenario in which the release of latent heat due to a first-order phase transition, from normal nuclear matter to the quark-gluon plasma, liberates the necessary energy to explain observed SN explosions.
• Here, the role of the metallicity of the stellar progenitor is investigated, comparing a solar metallicity and a low-metallicity case, both having a zero-age main sequence (ZAMS) mass of 75 $M_\odot$.
• It is found that low-metallicity models belong exclusively to the failed SN branch, featuring the formation of black holes without explosions.