MODULES FOR EXPERIMENTS IN STELLAR ASTROPHYSICS (MESA): PLANETS, OSCILLATIONS, ROTATION, AND MASSIVE STARS

By B. Paxton, Matteo Cantiello, Philipp Arras, L. Bildsten, E. Brown, Aaron Dotter, C. Mankovich, M. Montgomery, D. Stello, Francis Timmes and 1 more. 2013

2,495 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We substantially update the capabilities of the open source software package Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA), and its one-dimensional stellar evolution module, MESAstar. Improvements in MESAstar's ability to model the evolution of giant planets now extends its applicability down to masses as low as one-tenth that of Jupiter. The dramatic improvement in asteroseismology enabled by the space-based Kepler and CoRoT missions motivates our full coupling of the ADIPLS adiabatic pulsation code with MESAstar. This also motivates a numerical recasting of the Ledoux criterion that is more easily implemented when many nuclei are present at non-negligible abundances. This impacts the way in which MESAstar calculates semi-convective and thermohaline mixing. We exhibit the evolution of 3–8 M☉ stars through the end of core He burning, the onset of He thermal pulses, and arrival on the white dwarf cooling sequence. We implement diffusion of angular momentum and chemical abundances that enable calculations of rotating-star models, which we compare thoroughly with earlier work. We introduce a new treatment of radiation-dominated envelopes that allows the uninterrupted evolution of massive stars to core collapse. This enables the generation of new sets of supernovae, long gamma-ray burst, and pair-instability progenitor models. We substantially modify the way in which MESAstar solves the fully coupled stellar structure and composition equations, and we show how this has improved the scaling of MESA's calculational speed on multi-core processors. Updates to the modules for equation of state, opacity, nuclear reaction rates, and atmospheric boundary conditions are also provided. We describe the MESA Software Development Kit that packages all the required components needed to form a unified, maintained, and well-validated build environment for MESA. We also highlight a few tools developed by the community for rapid visualization of MESAstar results.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/09a158bf28836cc58944a9fb8405f46971c05526

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Citations in the corpus

• The White Dwarf Initial–Final Mass Relation for Progenitor Stars from 0.85 to 7.5 M⊙ (2018, methodology): “5) In addition to the semiempirical IFMR adopting PARSEC isochrones, we derive an IFMR based on stellar models and isochrones from the MIST isochrones (Dotter 2016, Choi et al. 2016), which are based on the Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA; Paxton et al. 2011, 2013, 2015).”
• Constraints from Gravitational-wave Detections of Binary Black Hole Mergers on the 12C(α, γ)16O Rate (2020, methodology): “MESA’s default nuclear reaction rates come from a combination of NACRE (Angulo et al. 1999) and REACLIB (Cyburt et al. 2010) (default snapshot7).”
• HYDROGEN BURNING ON ACCRETING WHITE DWARFS: STABILITY, RECURRENT NOVAE, AND THE POST-NOVA SUPERSOFT PHASE (2013, methodology): “To get around this, the convection in the outer envelope is artificially made more efficient so that the full computations need not be followed (Paxton et al. 2013).”
• Pre-supernova outbursts via wave heating in massive stars – I. Red supergiants (2017, methodology): “We used the MESA stellar evolution code (Paxton et al. 2011, 2013, 2015) to model the effect of wave heating on the stellar structure, implementing its 1D hydrodynamical capabilities to capture shocks and outflows resulting from wave heating.”
• Photoevaporation and high-eccentricity migration created the sub-Jovian desert (2018, methodology): “To achieve this we follow Owen & Wu (2013); Owen & Menou (2016); Chen & Rogers (2016) and use the mesa stellar and planetary evolution code (Paxton et al. 2011, 2013, 2015) to numerically determine the structure and evolution of a planet.”
• Type II-Plateau supernova radiation: dependences on progenitor and explosion properties (2013, methodology): “A lot of benchmarking has been done inMESA STAR, some of which is described in Paxton et al. (2011, 2013).”
• One Channel to Rule Them All? Constraining the Origins of Binary Black Holes Using Multiple Formation Pathways (2020, methodology): “…et al. 2021; in preparation), which, among other functionalities, stitches together different phases of binary evolution that are modeled using rapid population synthesis (COSMIC; Breivik et al. 2020) and detailed binary evolution calculations (MESA; Paxton et al. 2011, 2013, 2015, 2018, 2019).”
• ANGULAR MOMENTUM TRANSPORT WITHIN EVOLVED LOW-MASS STARS (2014, methodology): “This code is coupled and distributed within the MESA code suite (Paxton et al. 2013).”
• MESA ISOCHRONES AND STELLAR TRACKS (MIST). I. SOLAR-SCALED MODELS (2016, methodology): “As summarized in Paxton et al. (2013), the range of αsc and αth adopted by various authors spans several orders of magnitude, partially due to differences in the implementation in various codes.”
• ASTEROSEISMIC CLASSIFICATION OF STELLAR POPULATIONS AMONG 13,000 RED GIANTS OBSERVED BY KEPLER (2013, methodology): “To compare qualitatively with our observations, we plot ∆P g for a grid of stellar models in Figure 4(b) using the MESA1M pre ms to wd test suite case (Paxton et al. 2011, 2013).”
• GYRE: An open-source stellar oscillation code based on a new Magnus Multiple Shooting Scheme (2013, methodology): “Models for the 1.5M⊙ star spanning the bump phase are obtained by running the 1.5M with diffusion test-suite calculation of the MESASTAR stellar evolution code, revision 4930 (see Paxton et al. 2011, 2013).”
• Supermassive stars as a source of abundance anomalies of proton-capture elements in globular clusters (2013, methodology): “Because the SMSs are radiation pressure dominated objects with super-Eddington luminosities, we have used a new MESA option recommended for such cases (Paxton et al. 2013) that reduces the superadiabatic temperature gradient making it closer to the adiabatic one.”
• A new correction of stellar oscillation frequencies for near-surface effects (2014, methodology): “We constructed a stellar model with input parameters taken from the solar calibration presented by Paxton et al. (2013) and computed its oscillation frequencies and mode inertiae.”
• KEPLER PLANETS: A TALE OF EVAPORATION (2013, methodology): “The opacity tables are used for the irradiation of the atmosphere are based on an updated verision of the Freedman et al. (2008), as detailed in Paxton et al. (2013), where we adopt an opacity κ∗ = 4 × 10−3 cm2 g−1 to the incoming stellar irradiation suitable for a solar type star (Guillot 2010).”
• The spin of the second-born black hole in coalescing binary black holes (2018, methodology): “…and in the mass regime that leads to BH formation, we evolved, using the Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA) code version 8118 (Paxton et al. 2011, 2013, 2015, 2018), single massive stars of 50 M and 90 M at metallicities of 0.01 Z , 0.1 Z and Z (Z is the solar metallicity…”
• The origin of spin in binary black holes (2019, methodology): “A97, page 17 of 18 We cover these points by running MESA binary simulations as described in Sect.”