Hot third family of compact stars and the possibility of core-collapse supernova explosions

Abstract

A phase transition to quark matter can lead to interesting phenomenological consequences in core-collapse supernovae, e.g., triggering an explosion in spherically symmetric models. However, until now, this explosion mechanism was only shown to be working for equations of state that are in contradiction with recent pulsar mass measurements. Here, we identify that this explosion mechanism is related to the existence of a third family of compact stars. For the equations of state investigated, the third family is only pronounced in the hot, early stages of the protocompact star and absent or negligibly small at zero temperature and thus represents a novel kind of third family. This interesting behavior is a result of unusual thermal properties induced by the phase transition, e.g., characterized by a decrease of temperature with increasing density for isentropes, and can be related to a negative slope of the phase transition line in the temperature-pressure phase diagram.