Electromagnetic priors for black hole spindown in searches for gravitational-waves from supernovae and long GRBs

TL;DR

This paper uses electromagnetic observations of supernovae and GRBs to constrain their energy sources, highlighting black hole spindown as a potential gravitational-wave emission mechanism detectable by current observatories.

Contribution

It introduces electromagnetic priors to inform gravitational-wave searches, emphasizing black hole spindown as a key energy source in hyper-energetic supernovae and GRBs.

Findings

Some hyper-energetic events cannot be powered by proto-neutron star spindown.

Black hole spindown provides a promising gravitational-wave source.

Electromagnetic constraints help target gravitational-wave searches.

Abstract

Some core-collapse supernovae appear to be hyper-energetic, and a subset of these are aspherical and associated with long GRBs. We use observations of electromagnetic emission from core-collapse supernovae and GRBs to impose constraints on their free energy source as a prior to searches for their gravitational wave emission. We review these events based on a finite efficiency for the conversion of spin energy to magnetic winds powering supernovae. We find that some of the hyper-energetic events cannot be powered by the spindown of rapidly rotating proto-neutron stars by virtue of their limited rotational energy. They can, instead, be produced by the spindown of black holes providing a distinct prospect for gravitational-wave emission of interest to LIGO, Virgo, and the LCGT.