Supermassive Population III Supernovae and the Birth of the First
  Quasars
  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.
