Fallback and Black Hole Production in Massive Stars

By Weiqun Zhang, S. Woosley, Alexander Heger. 2007

215 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The compact remnants of core-collapse supernovae—neutron stars and black holes—have properties that reflect both the structure of their stellar progenitors and the physics of the explosion. In particular, the masses of these remnants are sensitive to the density structure of the presupernova star and to the explosion energy. To a considerable extent, the final mass is determined by the “fallback,” during the explosion, of matter that initially moves outward, yet ultimately fails to escape. We consider here the simulated explosion of a large number of massive stars (9-100 M☉) of Population I (solar metallicity) and III (zero metallicity) and find systematic differences in the remnant mass distributions. As pointed out by Chevalier, supernovae in more compact progenitor stars have stronger reverse shocks and experience more fallback. For Population III stars above about 25 M☉ and explosion energies less than 1.5 × 1051 ergs, black holes are a common outcome, with masses that increase with increasing main-sequence mass up to a maximum hole mass, for very low explosion energy, of about 40 M☉. If such stars produce primary nitrogen, however, their black holes are systematically smaller. For modern supernovae with nearly solar metallicity, black hole production is much less frequent and the typical masses, which depend sensitively on explosion energy, are smaller. The maximum black hole mass is about 15 M☉. We explore the neutron star initial mass function for both populations and, for reasonable assumptions about the initial mass cut of the explosion, find good agreement with the average of observed masses of neutron stars in binaries. We also find evidence for a bimodal distribution of neutron star masses with a spike around 1.2 M☉ (gravitational mass) and a broader distribution peaked around 1.4 M☉.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bcdc81a8e2549623a96502a94d5452836326c430

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Citations in the corpus

COMPACT REMNANT MASS FUNCTION: DEPENDENCE ON THE EXPLOSION MECHANISM AND METALLICITY (2011, background): “In general, the majority of this fallback occurs within the first 20 s after the explosion (Zhang et al. 2008; Fryer 2009).”
THE BLACK HOLE MASS DISTRIBUTION IN THE GALAXY (2010, background): “…explosions, namely of the black hole and neutron-star mass distributions, provide a different and complementary approach to constraining models of massive stellar populations, evolution, and explosions (Timmes et al. 1996; Fryer 1999; Fryer et al. 2002; Woosley et al. 2002; Zhang et al. 2008).”
The Proto-Magnetar Model for Gamma-Ray Bursts (2010, background): “…rotating) stars, which are instead powered by NS formation; or (2) a BH forms only after several seconds delay, due to the ‘fall-back’ of material that remains gravitationally bound despite a successful and energetic SN (e.g. Chevalier 1993; Fryer 1999; Zhang et al. 2008; Moriya et al. 2010).”
Formation of millisecond pulsars with CO white dwarf companions – II. Accretion, spin-up, true ages and comparison to MSPs with He white dwarf companions (2012, background): “For single stars, or very wide binaries, the critical ZAMS mass for neutron star production via type II supernovae is about 10M⊙ (Zhang et al. 2008).”
ON THE MAXIMUM MASS OF STELLAR BLACK HOLES (2009, background): “The latest results from the KEPLER code do not show these same bimodal effect on the FeNi core mass, so this effect may not be real (Zhang et al. 2008).”
The search for failed supernovae with the Large Binocular Telescope: confirmation of a disappearing star (2016, background): “When black holes are formed by “fall back” onto the proto-neutron star during successful SNe, the mass distributions of black holes and neutron stars are continuous because there is no natural mass scale for the amount of fall back (Zhang et al. 2008; Fryer et al. 2012).”
BLACK HOLE FORMATION IN FAILING CORE-COLLAPSE SUPERNOVAE (2010, background): “Leaving effects due to binary evolution aside, Zhang et al. (2008) performed an extensive study of fallback in artificially driven spherically symmetric CCSN explosions and estimated that zero-metallicity stars formBHs 2 in 20%-50% of all core-collapse events with an average BH mass of 6− 10M⊙.”
PROGENITOR-EXPLOSION CONNECTION AND REMNANT BIRTH MASSES FOR NEUTRINO-DRIVEN SUPERNOVAE OF IRON-CORE PROGENITORS (2012, background): “…wave initiation for studying SN nucleosynthesis and determining compact remnant masses are piston-driven explosions (e.g., Woosley & Weaver 1995; Zhang et al. 2008, and references therein), in which a piston is placed at a chosen position in the pre- or postcollapse stellar core and moved with…”
THE LANDSCAPE OF THE NEUTRINO MECHANISM OF CORE-COLLAPSE SUPERNOVAE: NEUTRON STAR AND BLACK HOLE MASS FUNCTIONS, EXPLOSION ENERGIES, AND NICKEL YIELDS (2014, background): “If an explosion is forced with a pre-defined asymptotic energy that is smaller than the overlying binding energy of the pro- genitor, significant fallback will occur (e.g. Zhang et al. 2008).”
CORE-COLLAPSE SUPERNOVAE FROM 9 TO 120 SOLAR MASSES BASED ON NEUTRINO-POWERED EXPLOSIONS (2015, background): “The helium core mass seems a better indicator (Zhang et al. 2008; Kochanek 2014, 2015).”
NUCLEOSYNTHESIS AND EVOLUTION OF MASSIVE METAL-FREE STARS (2008, methodology): “Indeed, unless the explosion mechanism can somehow provide a much greater energy than 1 B, black holes will be the typical result of stellar evolution for main-sequence masses above about 30 M (Zhang et al. 2008).”
SUPERNOVA LIGHT CURVES POWERED BY FALLBACK ACCRETION (2012, methodology): “…frequently been used to simulate core collapse supernova explosions and the resulting fallback (e.g., Woosley & Weaver 1995; MacFadyen et al. 2001; Zhang et al. 2008), and the uncertainties in the numerically calculated fallback accretion rates are probably less than those in the outflow physics…”