The Black Hole Formation Probability

Abstract

A longstanding question in stellar evolution is which massive stars produce black holes (BHs) rather than neutron stars (NSs) upon death. It has been common practice to assume that a given zero-age main sequence (ZAMS) mass star (and perhaps a given metallicity) simply produces either an NS or a BH, but this fails to account for a myriad of other variables that may effect this outcome, such as spin, binarity, or even stochastic differences in the stellar structure near core collapse. We argue that instead a probabilistic description of NS versus BH formation may be better suited to account for the current uncertainties in understanding how massive stars die. We present an initial exploration of the probability that a star will make a BH as a function of its ZAMS mass, $P_{\rm BH}(M_{\rm ZAMS})$. Although we find that it is difficult to derive a unique $P_{\rm BH}(M_{\rm ZAMS})$ using current measurements of both the BH mass distribution and the degree of chemical enrichment by massive stars, we demonstrate how $P_{\rm BH}(M_{\rm ZAMS})$ changes with these various observational and theoretical uncertainties. We anticipate that future studies of Galactic BHs and theoretical studies of core collapse will refine $P_{\rm BH}(M_{\rm ZAMS})$ and argue that this framework is an important new step toward better understanding BH formation. A probabilistic description of BH formation will be useful as input for future population synthesis studies that are interested in the formation of X-ray binaries, the nature and event rate of gravitational wave sources, and answering questions about chemical enrichment.