Wind modelling of very massive stars up to 300 solar masses

By J. Vink, L. Muijres, B. Anthonisse, A. D. Koter, G. Gräfener, N. Langer. 2011

143 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The stellar upper-mass limit is highly uncertain. Some studies have claimed there is a universal upper limit of ∼150 M� . A factor that is often overlooked is that there might be a significant difference between the present-day and the initial masses of the most massive stars – as a result of mass loss. The upper-mass limit may easily supersede ∼200 M� . For these reasons, we present new mass-loss predictions from Monte Carlo radiative transfer models for very massive stars (VMS) in the mass range 40–300 M� , and with very high luminosities 6.0 ≤ log(L� /L� ) ≤ 7.03, corresponding to large Eddington factors Γ. Using our new dynamical approach, we find an upturn or “kink” in the mass-loss versus Γ dependence, at the point where the model winds become optically thick. This coincides with the location where our wind efficiency numbers surpass the single-scattering limit of η = 1, reaching values up to η � 2.5. In all, our modelling suggests a transition from common O-type winds to Wolf-Rayet characteristics at the point where the winds become optically thick. This transitional behaviour is also revealed with respect to the wind acceleration parameter, β ,w hich starts at values below 1 for the optically thin O-stars, and naturally reaches values as high as 1.5–2 for the optically thick Wolf-Rayet models. An additional finding concerns the transition in spectral morphology of the Of and WN characteristic He ii line at 4686 A.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Education, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3008685f0ac4202e9a8f483717703b81b67c4162

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Citations in the corpus

Pulsational Pair-instability Supernovae (2016, background): “…of three varieties: linedriven mass loss which dominates on the main sequence and for other hot stars (e.g. Vink et al. 2001; Smith & Owocki 2006; Vink et al. 2011); less well understood continuum driven mass loss and envelope instabilities which may play an important role in luminous blue…”
COSMIC Variance in Binary Population Synthesis (2019, background): “…recent models suggest that as stars approach the limit imposed by the electron-scattering Eddington factor, Γe = χeL/(4πcGM) where χe is electron scattering opacity, winds may become insensitive to metallicity (e.g., Gräfener & Hamann 2008; Vink et al. 2011; Chen et al. 2015).”
The cosmic merger rate of stellar black hole binaries from the Illustris simulation (2017, methodology): “With respect to Belczynski et al. (2010), there is one crucial update: we take into account the dependence of the mass loss Ṁ on the electron-scattering Eddington ratio Γ (Gräfener & Hamann 2008; Vink et al. 2011; Vink 2016).”
Mass Loss: Its Effect on the Evolution and Fate of High-Mass Stars (2014, background): “High Γ values in hot stars can substantially affect the winds and increase mass-loss rates (Gräfener et al. 2011, Vink et al. 2011).”
MESA ISOCHRONES AND STELLAR TRACKS (MIST). I. SOLAR-SCALED MODELS (2016, background): “Other forms of enhanced mass loss rates include super-Eddington winds when the stellar luminosity exceeds Eddington luminosity (Gräfener et al. 2011; Vink et al. 2011).”
Merging black holes in young star clusters (2019, methodology): “MOBSE implements some of the most recent stellar wind models for massive hot stars (Vink et al. 2001; Gräfener & Hamann 2008; Vink et al. 2011; Vink 2016), including the impact of the Eddington factor Γe on mass loss (Gräfener & Hamann 2008; Chen et al. 2015).”
PARSEC evolutionary tracks of massive stars up to 350 M ☉ at metallicities 0.0001 ≤ Z ≤ 0.04 (2015, methodology): “…analysis of the dependence of the mass-loss rates on the metallicity and Γe, and since there is a continuity between the models provided by Vink et al. (2011) and those of WNL stars provided by Gräfener & Hamann (2008) (see discussion in Vink et al. (2011)), we assume in PARSEC that the…”
Very massive stars, pair-instability supernovae and intermediate-mass black holes with the sevn code (2017, methodology): “Vink et al. (2011) used a Monte Carlo approach to model the mass-loss rate of VMSs, but most stellar evolution codes do not include the Vink et al. (2011) prescriptions, with the remarkable exception of the Padova And tRieste Stellar Evolution Code (PARSEC, Chen et al. 2015).”
The mass spectrum of compact remnants from the parsec stellar evolution tracks (2015, methodology): “…supergiant (BSG) and LBV phases we adopt the maximum between the relations provided by Vink, de Koter & Lamers (2000, 2001), and that provided by Vink et al. (2011) which includes the dependence of the mass-loss rates on the ratio ( (cid:5) ) of the star luminosity to the corresponding…”
Merging black hole binaries: the effects of progenitor's metallicity, mass-loss rate and Eddington factor (2017, background): “In fact, Gräfener & Hamann (2008) and Vink et al. (2011) show that the massloss rate is strongly enhanced when the star approaches the electron-scattering Eddington limit Γe.”
New PARSEC evolutionary tracks of massive stars at low metallicity: testing canonical stellar evolution in nearby star-forming dwarf galaxies (2014, methodology): “Besides the already specified mass-loss rate formulation RV01 we compute also the dependence on Γ, using the tables provided by Vink et al. (2011), RΓ.”
Ultraluminous X-ray sources in the Chandra and XMM-Newton era (2011, background): “Radiatively-driven winds from massive stars are strongly dependent on their metallicity (Vink 2011; Vink et al. 2011).”
Merging black hole binaries with the SEVN code (2018, background): “Massive metal-poor stars are thought to lose less mass by stellar winds than their metal-rich analogues (Vink, de Koter & Lamers 2001; Gräfener & Hamann 2008; Vink et al. 2011).”