Driven neutron star collapse: Type~I critical phenomena and the initial black hole mass distribution

Understand

We study the general relativistic collapse of neutron star (NS) models in spherical symmetry.

• Our initially stable models are driven to collapse by the addition of one of two things: an initially in-going velocity profile, or a shell of minimally coupled, massless scalar field that falls onto the star.
• Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff (TOV) solutions with an initially isentropic, gamma-law equation of state serve as our NS models.
• The initial values of the velocity profile's amplitude and the star's central density span a parameter space which we have surveyed extensively and which we find provides a rich picture of the possible end states of NS collapse.