The Birth of Quark Stars: Photon-driven Supernovae?

Abstract

In this letter we propose a possible mechanism trying to alleviate the current difficulty in core-collapse supernovae by forming a strange quark star inside the collapsing core. Although the initial longtime cooling behavior of nascent strange stars is dominated by neutrino emissions, thermal emissions including photons and $e^\pm$ pair plasma do play a significant role in the explosion dynamics under this picture. The key to promote a successful shock outside a bare strange star is more likely to be the radiation pressure caused by thermal photons rather than neutrinos in conventional models. We observed through calculation that radiation pressure can push the overlying mantle away through photon-electron scattering with energy (the work done by radiation pressure) as much as ~10^{51} erg if protoquark stars are born with temperatures higher than ~ (30-40) MeV. This result not only indicates that strange quark stars should be bare ever since their formations, it could also provide a possible explanation to the formation of fireballs in cosmic long-soft $\gamma$-ray bursts associated to supernovae.