Electromagnetic pulse from final gravitational stellar collapse

¹ Development Systems Group B301, Veridian Systems Division, 14700 Lee Road, Chantilly, VA 20151, USA e-mail: Peter.Morley@Veridian.com
² Departamento de Física, Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Casilla 110-V, Valparaíso, Chile e-mail: ischmidt@fis.utfsm.cl

Corresponding author: P. D. Morley, pychen@rma.edu

Received: 14 May 2001
Accepted: 16 November 2001

Abstract

We employ an effective gravitational stellar final collapse model which contains the relevant physics involved in this complex phenomena: spherical radical infall in the Schwarzschild metric of the homogeneous core of an advanced star, giant magnetic dipole moment, magnetohydrodynamic material response and realistic equations of state (EOS). The electromagnetic pulse is computed both for medium size cores undergoing hydrodynamic bounce and large size cores undergoing black hole formation. We clearly show that there must exist two classes of neutron stars, separated by maximum allowable masses: those that collapsed as solitary stars (dynamical mass limit) and those that collapsed in binary systems allowing mass accretion (static neutron star mass). Our results show that the electromagnetic pulse spectrum associated with black hole formation is a universal signature, independent of the nuclear EOS. Our results also predict that there must exist black holes whose masses are less than the static neutron star stability limit.