Abstract
Supermassive stars are Population III stars with masses exceeding 104, M⊙ that could be the progenitors of the first supermassive black holes. Their interiors are in a regime where radiation pressure dominates the equation of state. In this work, we use the explicit gas dynamics code ppmstar to simulate the hydrogen-burning core of a 104,M⊙ supermassive main-sequence star. These are the first three-dimensional hydrodynamics simulations of core convection in supermassive stars. We perform a series of 10 simulations at different heating rates and on Cartesian grids with resolutions of 7683, 11523, and 17283. We examine different properties of the convective flow, including its large-scale morphology, its velocity spectrum, and its mixing properties. We conclude that the radiation pressure-dominated nature of the interior does not noticeably affect the behaviour of convection compared to the case of core convection in a massive main-sequence star where gas pressure dominates. Our simulations also offer support for the use of mixing-length theory in one-dimensional models of supermassive stars.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 4605-4613 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society |
Volume | 521 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - May 1 2023 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2023 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society.
Keywords
- hydrodynamics
- methods: numerical
- quasars: supermassive black holes
- stars: Population III
- stars: interiors
- turbulence