Thermal Effects on Black Hole Formation in Failed Core-Collapse Supernovae

TL;DR

This study uses relativistic simulations to analyze how thermal effects, including neutrino processes, influence black hole formation in failed supernovae, highlighting the role of thermal support in the protoneutron star's evolution.

Contribution

It introduces the incorporation of nucleon-nucleon Bremsstrahlung into simulations to assess thermal effects on black hole formation in supernovae.

Findings

Thermal support significantly affects the timing of black hole formation.

Nucleon-nucleon Bremsstrahlung impacts neutrino emission and thermal evolution.

Artificially driven explosions demonstrate the importance of thermal support in collapse dynamics.

Abstract

We investigate several aspects of black hole formation in failing core-collapse supernovae using 1D general-relativistic hydrodynamic simulations. We use the open-source code GR1D and incorporate into it nucleon-nucleon Bremsstrahlung, a crucial neutrino pair-production channel. We focus on how various thermal effects can influence the postbounce supernova evolution towards black hole formation. By performing simulations with and without nucleon-nucleon Bremsstrahlung, we investigate the sensitivity of black hole formation to thermal support in the protoneutron star. We also investigate delayed black hole formation by artificially driving explosions in an extreme model where the protoneutron star is initially thermally supported above the maximum baryonic cold neutron star mass but then collapses to a black hole after neutrino cooling removes sufficient thermal support.