Supermassive Population III Supernovae and the Birth of the First Quasars

Abstract

The existence of supermassive black holes as early as z ~ 7 is one of the great unsolved problems in cosmological structure formation. One leading theory argues that they are born during catastrophic baryon collapse in z ~ 15 protogalaxies in strong Lyman-Werner UV backgrounds. Atomic line cooling in such galaxies fragments baryons into massive clumps that are thought to directly collapse to 10^4 - 10^5 solar-mass black holes. We have now discovered that some of these fragments can instead become supermassive stars that eventually explode as pair-instability supernovae with energies of ~ 10^55 erg, the most energetic explosions in the universe. We have calculated light curves and spectra for supermassive Pop III PI SNe with the Los Alamos RAGE and SPECTRUM codes. We find that they will be visible in NIR all-sky surveys by Euclid out to z ~ 10 - 15 and by WFIRST and WISH out to z ~ 15 - 20, perhaps revealing the birthplaces of the first quasars.