Stellar evolution with rotation XI. Wolf-Rayet star populations at different metallicities

By G. Meynet, Andre Maeder. 2004

450 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Grids of models of massive stars (M ≥ 20 M� ) with rotation are computed for metallicities Z ranging from that of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) to that of the Galactic Centre. The hydrostatic effects of rotation, the rotational mixing and the enhancements of the mass loss rates by rotation are included. The evolution of the surface rotational velocities of the most massive O-stars mainly depends on the mass loss rates and thus on the initial Z value. The minimum initial mass for a star for entering the Wolf-Rayet (WR) phase is lowered by rotation. For all metallicities, rotating stars enter the WR phase at an earlier stage of evolution and the WR lifetimes are increased, mainly as a result of the increased duration of the eWNL phase. Models of WR stars predict in general rather low rotation velocities (<50 km s −1 ) with a few possible exceptions, particularly at metallicities lower than solar where WR star models have in general faster rotation and more chance to reach the break-up limit. The properties of the WR populations as predicted by the rotating models are in general in much better agreement with the observations in nearby galaxies. Some possible remaining difficulties in these comparisons are mentioned. The evolution of the chemical abundances is largely influenced by rotation in all phases from the MS phase to the WN and WC phases. We also show that the interval of initial masses going through the LBV stage is changing with Z and Ω. The observed variation with metallicity of the fractions of type Ib/Ic supernovae with respect to type II supernovae as found by Prantzos & Boissier (2003) is very well reproduced by the rotating models, while non-rotating models predict much too low ratios. This indicates that the minimum initial masses of single stars going through a WR phase are consistently predicted. At Z = 0.040, stars with initial masses above 50 Mreach a final mass at the time of supernova explosion between 5 and 7.5 M� , while at Z = 0.004, like in the SMC, the final masses of stars are in the range of 17-29 M� . On the whole, rotation appears to be an essential parameter even for the WR properties. Detailed tables describing the evolutionary tracks are available on the web.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Computational Mechanics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1ac5037f83c4fd5afac55e5dd4956d8b35beb342

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. N. Langer
2. Michela Mapelli
3. C. Conroy
4. S. Smartt
5. Stan Woosley
6. Selma de Mink
7. G. Meynet
8. N. Giacobbo

In Computational Mechanics

1. Stan Woosley
2. N. Langer
3. P. Crowther
4. G. Meynet
5. R. Hirschi
6. Sung-Chul Yoon
7. A. Chieffi
8. M. Limongi

Citations in the corpus

• Hydrodynamical stellar models including rotation, internal gravity waves, and atomic diffusion - I. Formalism and tests on Pop I dwarfs (2005, background): “They also account for the observed variations of the Wolf-Rayet star populations, as well as the fractions of type Ib/Ic supernovae with respect to type II SN at various metallicities (see Maeder & Meynet 2000; Meynet & Maeder 2005, and references therein).”
• The VLT FLAMES Survey of Massive Stars: Rotation and Nitrogen Enrichment as the Key to Understanding Massive Star Evolution (2007, background): “…theoretical models to, for example, predict the correct blue-tored supergiant ratio (Maeder & Meynet 2001), the progenitors of gamma-ray bursts through homogeneous evolution (Yoon & Langer 2005), and Wolf-Rayet populations as a function of metallicity (Meynet & Maeder 2005; Vink & de Koter 2005).”
• MESA ISOCHRONES AND STELLAR TRACKS (MIST). I. SOLAR-SCALED MODELS (2016, background): “There has been a long-standing mismatch between the predicted and observed WC/WN ratios, especially at high metallicities (Meynet & Maeder 2005; Neugent & Massey 2011; Neugent et al. 2012).”
• PRE-SUPERNOVA EVOLUTION OF ROTATING SOLAR METALLICITY STARS IN THE MASS RANGE 13–120 M☉ AND THEIR EXPLOSIVE YIELDS (2012, methodology): “…& Weigert (1990), grids of rotating massive stars – 4 – have been computed and discussed by Meynet & Maeder (2000, 2003); Hirschi et al. (2004); Meynet & Maeder (2005); Decressin et al. (2007); Ekström et al. (2008); Ekström et al. (2012) and Heger et al. (2000); Heger & Langer (2000);…”
• Stellar and wind properties of massive stars in the central parsec of the Galaxy (2006, background): “In the recent models of Meynet & Maeder (2005), X(He) evolves slowly from the initial value during all the “O” phase, and then dramatically increases when the star f ) as a function of luminosity for GC WN stars (red filled symbols) compared to other Galactic Wolf-Rayet stars (blue and black…”
• Stellar evolution with rotation and magnetic fields III. The interplay of circulation and dynamo (2005, methodology): “The physics of the models, opacities, nuclear reactions, mass loss rates, structural rotational effects, shear mixing, meridional circulation, etc. are the same as in recent models of the Geneva group (Meynet & Maeder 2005).”
• Evolution of interstellar dust and stardust in the solar neighbourhood (2007, background): “The LBV phase, however, seems to occur during the first transition from the blue to the red in the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram (Lamers et al. 2001) and is followed by a WR-phase that lasts about 3 × 10 5 . . . 10 6 yrs (Meynet & Maeder 2005).”
• Evolution towards the critical limit and the origin of Be stars (2007, methodology): “…models we use were computed with physical ingredients that made predictions consistent with many observational fe - tures of massive stars (see Meynet & Maeder 2005, and the references therein on the series of papers by the Geneva group on rotating models) and thus it is interesting to…”
• Evolution and fate of very massive stars (2013, background): “Note that the effective temperature given here includes a correction for WR stars to take into account the fact that their winds are optically thick as in Meynet & Maeder (2005).”
• Formation of Supermassive Black Hole Seeds (2016, background): “…show that mass loss from the stellar winds is metallicity dependent, scales with ṁloss ∝ Z 0.5 and consequently metal rich stars show much higher mass loss compared to the metal poor stars (Nugis & Lamers 2000; Kudritzki & Puls 2000; Baraffe et al. 2001; Heger et al. 2003; Meynet & Maeder 2005).”
• Spectroscopy of superluminous supernova host galaxies. A preference of hydrogen-poor events for extreme emission line galaxies (2014, background): “These stellar lifetimes can imply progenitors with initial masses well exceeding 60 M (e.g. Woosley, Heger & Weaver 2002; Meynet & Maeder 2005).”
• COSMIC Variance in Binary Population Synthesis (2019, background): “Recent work has shown that line-driven winds exhibit strong dependence upon metallicity both on the main sequence (MS) and post-MS (e.g., Vink et al. 2001; Meynet & Maeder 2005; Gräfener & Hamann 2008; Vink et al. 2011).”
• The Progenitor Stars of Gamma-Ray Bursts (2005, background): “The rotation rate for WR stars is not well determined observationally, but is expected, on theoretical grounds, to be rapid, at least for low metallicity (Meynet & Maeder 2005).”
• The chemical composition of metal-poor emission-line galaxies in the Data Release 3 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2005, methodology): “Let us consider the massive star rotating models for a metallicity equal to Z=0.004, which corresponds to 12+log O/H=8.2, computed recently by Meynet & Maeder (2005).”
• KECK HIRES SPECTROSCOPY OF EXTRAGALACTIC H ii REGIONS: C AND O ABUNDANCES FROM RECOMBINATION LINES (2009, background): “R stars (Meynet & Maeder 2005), and (6) the comparison of the solar abundances with the Orion Nebula abundances (Carigi & Peimbert 2008).”
• The Effect of Massive Binaries on Stellar Populations and Supernova Progenitors (2007, methodology): “Meynet & Maeder (2005) have shown that standard non-rotating single star models do not”
• Stellar evolution with rotation and magnetic fields - IV. The solar rotation profile (2005, methodology): “The stellar evolution code used for these computations is the Geneva code including shellular rotation (Meynet & Maeder 2005).”