The formation of black holes from rapidly accreting supermassive stars is not trivial: Simulations of thermonuclear pulsations and explosions

Abstract

In recent years, the formation and evolution of rapidly accreting supermassive stars has received significant attention in the hope of better understanding the origin of high redshift quasars. It is often taken for granted that once formed, these supermassive stars will encounter the general relativistic radial instability and collapse to form massive black holes. Here, we present the first ever general relativistic hydrodynamical simulations of the collapse of rapidly accreting supermassive stars. We find that black hole formation is in many cases prevented by nuclear burning due to the long timescales of the collapse of these stars ($10^6$ s). Consequently, this is a novel astrophysical site for hot CNO burning and hydrogen burning via proton captures. For Pop III accreting supermassive stars, we find that only stars with very high (100 $\rm{M_\odot}/$yr) or low (0.1 $\rm{M_\odot}/$yr) accretion rates can form black holes, with models in between undergoing energetic thermonuclear pulsations. The final fate of these pulsating models may be to undergo subsequent pulsations or explosions or to collapse to black holes. For metal rich accreting supermassive stars ($Z\geq 0.1 \rm{Z_\odot}$), we do not find any black hole formation, with some models undergoing extremely energetic explosions ($10^{55}$ ergs). Our results invite further study on the formation of massive black holes from rapidly accreting supermassive stars which have reached the general relativistic radial instability.