Progenitor-Explosion Connection and Remnant Birth Masses for Neutrino-Driven Supernovae of Iron-Core Progenitors

TL;DR

This study uses hydrodynamic simulations of over 100 solar-metallicity stars to investigate how progenitor structures influence supernova explosions and remnant masses, revealing variability and challenging existing paradigms.

Contribution

It introduces a simplified neutrino transport model to simulate supernovae across a wide range of progenitors, highlighting the impact of stellar structure on explosion outcomes and remnant formation.

Findings

Remnant mass and explosion properties vary significantly with stellar structure.

Both neutron stars and black holes can form depending on progenitor mass and envelope loss.

Neutrino heating explains typical supernova energies but not the most energetic explosions.

Abstract

We perform hydrodynamic supernova simulations in spherical symmetry for over 100 single stars of solar metallicity to explore the progenitor-explosion and progenitor-remnant connections established by the neutrino-driven mechanism. We use an approximative treatment of neutrino transport and replace the high-density interior of the neutron star (NS) by an inner boundary condition based on an analytic proto-NS core-cooling model, whose free parameters are chosen such that explosion energy, nickel production, and energy release by the compact remnant of progenitors around 20 solar masses are compatible with Supernova 1987A. Thus we are able to simulate the accretion phase, initiation of the explosion, subsequent neutrino-driven wind phase for 15-20 s, and the further evolution of the blast wave for hours to days until fallback is completed. Our results challenge long-standing paradigms. We find that remnant mass, launch time, and properties of the explosion depend strongly on the stellar structure and exhibit large variability even in narrow intervals of the progenitors' zero-age-main-sequence mass. While all progenitors with masses below about 15 solar masses yield NSs, black hole (BH) as well as NS formation is possible for more massive stars, where partial loss of the hydrogen envelope leads to weak reverse shocks and weak fallback. Our NS baryonic masses of ~1.2-2.0 solar masses and BH masses >6 solar masses are compatible with a possible lack of low-mass BHs in the empirical distribution. Neutrino heating accounts for SN energies between some 10^{50} erg and about 2*10^{51} erg, but can hardly explain more energetic explosions and nickel masses higher than 0.1-0.2 solar masses. These seem to require an alternative SN mechanism.