Resolving The Peak Of The Black Hole Mass Spectrum

Understand

Gravitational wave (GW) detections of binary black hole (BH) mergers have begun to sample the cosmic BH mass distribution.

• The evolution of single stellar cores predicts a gap in the BH mass distribution due to pair-instability supernova (PISN).
• Determining the upper and lower edges of the BH mass gap can be useful for interpreting GW detections from merging BHs.
• We use \MESA\ to evolve single, non-rotating, massive helium cores with a metallicity of $Z = 10^{-5}$ until they either collapse to form a BH or explode as a PISN without leaving a compact remnant.