Phenomenological gravitational radiation from rotating stellar collapse to an intermediate mass Kerr black hole

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Intermediate mass black holes may be formed through repeated coalescences of compact objects or through the direct collapse of a hypermassive star formed through runaway collisions of main sequence stars. The gravitational wave signature of these two formation scenarios will be different. Here we present an initial study of the waveform generated during the direct axisymmetric collapse of a hypermassive star in order to facilitate searches for this source. We approximate the collapse of the core as an axisymmetric Newtonian free-fall of a rotating relativistic degenerate iron core. The collapse waveform can be reasonably well modeled by an exponential growth.