Identify which stars form black holes

Identify which massive stars form black holes rather than undergoing alternative core-collapse outcomes.

Background

The wide-binary pathway relies on the first-born compact object being a black hole and on the amount of mass ejected during its formation. The paper explicitly states that the mapping between stellar properties and black-hole formation is unresolved, which affects predictions for mass-ratio reversal and the resulting black-hole masses.

References

It remains uncertain which stars can form BH.

— Can isolated binaries form unequal-mass binary black-hole mergers with a high-spin primary black hole?  (2609.05128 - Xu et al., 4 Sep 2026) in Section 2.1, subsection “Wide binaries,” footnote 2

While stellar profiles obtained from MESA include radii very close to the center of the star, the details of core-collapse in this region requires a treatment of 3D general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics, with still many open questions regarding the evolution of proto-neutron stars, and the formation of black holes and neutron stars.

— The Prompt Emission of Gamma-Ray Bursts from Population III Stars  (2610.09463 - Walker et al., 7 Oct 2026) in Section 3, Numerical Setup, Initial Conditions