SPH simulations of the induced gravitational collapse

Abstract

In the induced gravitational collapse (IGC) paradigm, a carbon–oxygen (CO) star collapses and explodes in a supernova (SN) in the presence of a binary companion, a neutron star (NS). The material ejected in the explosion is gravitationally attracted by the NS, triggering a hypercritical accretion process onto it. For compact systems, the accretion rate could be high enough for the NS to reach its critical mass, collapse in a black hole (BH) and emit an energetic (energy release $\gtrsim 10^{52}$ erg) gamma-ray burst (GRB). With the aim to identify the separatrix of systems in which a BH is formed and characterize the observational signatures of the above process, we have performed three-dimensional (3D) smoothed-particle-hydrodynamics (SPH) numerical simulations of the SN expansion in the presence of the NS companion and the evolution of the NS during the accretion process. We here summarize the results of the above simulations for a wide range of the initial conditions of the parameter space.