Kavli Affiliate: Erin Kara
| First 5 Authors: Kishalay De, Morgan MacLeod, Jacob E. Jencson, Elizabeth Lovegrove, Andrea Antoni
| Summary:
Stellar mass black holes are formed from the terminal collapse of massive
stars if the ensuing neutrino shock is unable to eject the stellar envelope.
Direct observations of black hole formation remain inconclusive. We report
observations of M31-2014-DS1, a massive, hydrogen-depleted supergiant in the
Andromeda galaxy identified via a mid-infrared brightening in 2014. Its total
luminosity remained nearly constant for the subsequent thousand days, before
fading dramatically over the next thousand days by $gtrsim 10times$ and
$gtrsim 10^4times$ in total and visible light, respectively. Together with
the lack of a detected optical outburst, the observations are explained by the
fallback of the stellar envelope into a newly formed black hole, moderated by
the injection of a $sim 10^{48}$ erg shock. Unifying these observations with a
candidate in NGC 6946, we present a concordant picture for the birth of stellar
mass black holes from stripped massive stars.
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