Black Hole Emergence in Supernovae

Abstract

If a black hole formed in a core-collapse supernova is accreting material from the base of the envelope, the accretion luminosity could be observable in the supernova light curve. We present results of a fully relativistic numerical investigation of the fallback of matter onto a black hole in a supernova and examine conditions which would be favorable for detection of the black hole. In general, heating by radioactive decays is likely to prevent practical detection of the black hole, but we show that low energy explosions of more massive stars may provide an important exception. We emphasize the particular case of SN1997D in NGC1536, for which we predict that the presence of a black hole could be inferred observationally within the next year.