The Emergence of a Black Hole in Supernova Explosions

Abstract

We present results from a fully relativistic investigation of matter fallback in a supernova, assuming that the central compact star is a black hole (BH). Our goal is to answer the following questions: can we infer from the light curve whether a stellar black hole (BH) has formed in the aftermath of a supernova explosion ? Did SN1897A produce a BH and, if so, when will the hole become detectable ? We show that it should not be possible to infer the presence of a BH in the remnant for another several hundred to a thousand years. In the case of SN1987A, we estimate the BH luminosity to be $L\simeq 5\times 10^{34}$ erg s${}^{-1}$, which is well below the present day bolometric luminosity of the remnant ($\sim 10^{36}erg/s$; Suntzeff 1997).

5 pages, LaTeX, AIP style file (aipproc.sty), 2 postscript figures. To appear in the Proceedings of the 8th Annual Astrophysics Conference in Maryland, "Accretion Processes in Astrophysical Systems", S. S. Holt & T. Kallman eds