Core-collapse of the most massive stars is believed to produce stellar mass black holes with or without a supernova. Those that fail to produce supernovae are most likely to preserve binary association, providing progenitors to binary black hole systems to the mergers observed with LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK). Criteria for producing failed versus successful supernovae are not well understood, e.g., depending on mass and equalizing mass transfer prior to collapse. The latter is inferred from the tail in the mass distribution of the BBH mergers (Park, Kim, Kim & van Putten, 2022, ApJ, 938, 69). Support for failed supernovae comes from evidence of a striking lack of the most massive stars in the progenitors of observed supernovae. These events may nevertheless be loud in gravitational-wave emission. The prospective candidate is expected to perform a detailed statistical analysis of the progenitors of failed supernovae and their GW signatures in prompt black hole formation subject to the statistics of observed BBH mergers.
Riferimenti: Massimo Della Valle, Luca Izzo and Maurice H.P.M. van Putten