Gravitational radiation from supernovae

Abstract

We draw attention to the analogy between the collapse of a rotating stellar core to form a neutron star in a supernova explosion and the collapse of a rotating molecular cloud core to form a protostar. In particular, we speculate that the propensity of collapsing molecular cores to fragment and produce binary and multiple systems of stars is an indication that collapse in a supernova to nuclear densities occurs via a succession of fragmentations which are damped out by gravitational radiation. If so, this would imply that a large fraction (up to 1 per cent) of the energy available in a supernova explosion is normally emitted in the form of gravitational waves.