Contribution of accretion to the bolometric luminosity of SN 1987A

The investigations of the bolometric light curve of SN1987A are briefly reviewed. We suggest that the accretion luminosity produced by an assumed neutron star in the center of SN1987A is important for the evolution of the bolometric light curve at a later stage. We emphasize the marked difference of our model with previous accretion models, where the backfall of material mainly occurs within the first few seconds after the explosion and the details of accretion are dependent on the explosion mechanism which is very uncertain. In this paper, we are concerned with the continuous gravitational infall of material within the expansion envelope. Our suggestion is directly inspired by the observation of the line profile and is weakly dependent on the explosion model. Taking as typical values of the neutron star mass M = 1.4M and radius R = 106cm, the model calculation fits the observed light curve well. This a posteriori supports the assumption of central neutron star.