Minutes-delayed Jets from a Neutron Star Companion in Core-collapse Supernovae

Abstract

This paper presents cases in which a neutron star (NS; or a black hole) companion to a type-Ib or type-Ic (stripped-envelope) core-collapse supernova (CCSN) accretes mass from the explosion ejecta and launches jets minutes to hours after explosion. The NS orbits at a pre-explosion radius of a  ≃ 1−5 R ⊙ . When the ejecta velocity drops to , the ejecta gas that the NS accretes possesses sufficient specific angular momentum to form an accretion disk around the NS. The NS accretes a fraction of of the ejecta mass through an accretion disk over a time period of 10 minutes–few hr. If the jets carry about 10% of the accretion energy, then their total energy is a fraction of about 0.003−0.03 of the kinetic energy of the ejecta. The implications of these jets from an NS (or a black hole) companion to a CCSN are the shaping of the inner ejecta to have a bipolar morphology, energizing the light curve of the CCSN, and in some cases the possible enrichment of the inner ejecta with r-process elements.