2008ApJ...688.1176S

We study the progenitor dependence of black hole formation and its associated neutrino signal due to the gravitational collapse of a nonrotating massive star, following on our previous study of a single progenitor model. We aim to clarify whether the dynamical evolution toward black hole formation occurs in the same manner for different progenitors and to examine whether the characteristic of neutrino bursts having short duration and rapidly increasing average energies is a general one. We perform numerical simulations using general relativistic neutrino radiation hydrodynamics to follow the dynamical evolution from the collapse of 40 and 50 M_☉ presupernova models to black hole formation via contracting proto-neutron stars. For the three progenitor models studied in this paper, we find that black hole formation occurs ∼0.4-1.5 s after core bounce through an increase of the proto-neutron star mass, accompanied by a short and energetic neutrino burst. The density profile of the progenitor is important in determining the accretion rate onto the proto-neutron star and, therefore, the duration of the neutrino burst. We compare the neutrino bursts of black hole-forming events from different progenitors and discuss whether they can be used to probe clearly the progenitor and the dense matter.