Mechanical feedback from black hole accretion as an energy source of core-collapse supernova explosions

TL;DR

This paper explores how black hole accretion-driven winds can provide the energy needed to successfully explode massive stars as supernovae, especially when traditional shock mechanisms fail.

Contribution

It introduces a new model where disk winds from black hole formation drive supernova explosions, expanding the understanding of explosion mechanisms for compact, low-metallicity stars.

Findings

Black hole accretion disk winds can supply sufficient energy for supernova explosions.

Compact, low-metallicity pre-supernova stars are most likely to explode via this mechanism.

Explosion energies range from 10^{51} to 10^{52} ergs, depending on progenitor mass.

Abstract

According to the traditional scenario for core-collapse supernovae, the core of the collapsing star forms a neutron star and its gravitational energy release sends out a shockwave into the stellar envelope. However, in a significant number of numerical simulations, the shock stalls and the star cannot be exploded successfully, especially for a massive, compact star. We consider an alternative scenario that with mass fallback, the collapsing star forms a black hole in the center, surrounded by a dense, hot accretion disk, which blows out an intense outflow (wind). The kinetic energy of the wind may result in a successful stellar explosion. With an improved version of the formulism in Kohri et al. (2005) who studied neutron star accretion of minor fallback, we study this disk wind-driven explosion by calculating the accretion history for a suite of pre-SN stellar models with different initial surface rotational velocities, masses and metallicities, and by comparing the disk wind energy with the binding energy of the infalling stellar envelope. We show that the most promising models to be exploded successfully by this new channel are those relatively compact pre-SN stars with relatively low metallicities and not too low specific angular momenta. The total energies of the explosions are $\sim 10^{51-52}$ergs, and a more massive progenitor may produce a more energetic explosion.