Mass Loss: Its Effect on the Evolution and Fate of High-Mass Stars

By N. Smith. 2014

755 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Our understanding of massive star evolution is in flux due to recent upheavals in our view of mass loss and observations of a high binary fraction among O-type stars. Mass-loss rates for standard metallicity-dependent winds of hot stars are lower by a factor of 2–3 compared with rates adopted in modern stellar evolution codes, due to the influence of clumping on observed diagnostics. Weaker hot star winds shift the burden of H-envelope removal to the winds, pulsations, and eruptions of evolved supergiants, as well as binary mass transfer. Studies of stripped-envelope supernovae, in particular, require binary mass transfer. Dramatic examples of eruptive mass loss are seen in Type IIn supernovae, which have massive shells ejected just a few years earlier. These eruptions are a prelude to core collapse, and may signify severe instabilities in the latest nuclear burning phases. We encounter the predicament that the most important modes of mass loss are also the most uncertain, undermining the predictive power...

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/985817775ad0331a8d99b250692662b00b11acb4

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. L. Hernquist
2. Michela Mapelli
3. C. Conroy
4. Volker Springel
5. P. Hopkins
6. E. Quataert
7. B. Metzger
8. Shy Genel

In Instrumentation

1. L. Hernquist
2. C. Conroy
3. P. Hopkins
4. Volker Springel
5. Shy Genel
6. P. Torrey
7. M. Vogelsberger
8. D. Nelson

Citations in the corpus

• An Embedded X-Ray Source Shines through the Aspherical AT 2018cow: Revealing the Inner Workings of the Most Luminous Fast-evolving Optical Transients (2018, background): “The effective radius of a massive star could be increased just prior to its explosion by envelope inflation or enhanced mass loss timed with stellar death, as observed in a variety of SNe (e.g., Smith 2014).”
• ASTROPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE BINARY BLACK HOLE MERGER GW150914 (2016, background): “Their strengths depend on stellar properties, but cannot be derived from first principles; instead they are empirically derived and calibrated based on observations (for a review, see Smith 2014).”
• Dawes Review 6: The Impact of Companions on Stellar Evolution (2016, neutral): “…have LBV-like mass-loss rates and in four cases progenitors are known, e.g., SN 1961V (Smith et al., 2011b; Kochanek, Szczygiel, & Stanek, 2011), 2005gl (GalYam & Leonard, 2009), 2010jl (Smith et al., 2011b), and 2009ip (Smith et al. 2010, Foley et al. 2011; see also Smith (2014) for a review).”
• MESA ISOCHRONES AND STELLAR TRACKS (MIST). I. SOLAR-SCALED MODELS (2016, background): “It is frequently cited as one of the most uncertain ingredients in stellar evolution, and is thought to play a crucial role in the advanced stages of stellar evolution for low-mass stars and in all phases of evolution for massive stars (see Smith 2014 for a recent review on this topic).”
• Observational and Physical Classification of Supernovae (2016, neutral): “The narrow and intermediate-width emission lines are often assumed to result from the SN ejecta interacting with slowly-moving massive CSM (e.g., Chugai & Danziger 1994; Smith 2014).”
• The Carnegie Supernova Project I: analysis of stripped-envelope supernova light curves (2017, background): “…theory shows that single stars below a certain initial mass are unable to strip their outer envelopes, given that their line-driven winds are not strong enough to sustain large mass-loss rates for enough time (see e.g., Smith 2014, for a recent review on mass loss of massive stars).”
• Mass loss of stars on the asymptotic giant branch (2018, background): “…velocities of about 1000–3000 km s−1, are presumably driven by atomic line opacity, with Doppler shifts in the wind acceleration zone strongly increasing the effective line width (see, e.g., Owocki 2010; Smith 2014; Puls et al. 2015, for recent reviews on mass-loss mechanisms in massive stars).”
• THE EFFECTS OF STELLAR ROTATION. II. A COMPREHENSIVE SET OF STARBURST99 MODELS (2014, background): “The lower mass loss early in the evolution is compensated for by the increased importance of the luminous blue variable phase when significant amounts of mass are ejected in eruptions (see the review by Smith 2014).”
• Bolometric light curves and explosion parameters of 38 stripped-envelope core-collapse supernovae (2014, background): “The current understanding of mass-loss from massive stars is encompassed in the review of Smith (2014), which includes a discussion of recent SN studies that favour the majority of SE SNe arising from binaries, with single, very massive Wolf– Rayet stars contributing a small fraction at most.”
• RECONCILING THE STELLAR AND NEBULAR SPECTRA OF HIGH-REDSHIFT GALAXIES (2016, background): “…main sequence lifetimes, evolutionary stages, end states, and chemical yields from massive stars all depend on the details of mass loss (e.g., Smith 2014), which itself depends on the initial chemical composition (e.g., Puls et al. 2008; Kudritzki & Puls 2000; Cantiello et al. 2007; Eldridge…”
• Delay-time distribution of core-collapse supernovae with late events resulting from binary interaction (2017, background): “The mass-loss rate by stellar winds as well as eruptive events is uncertain, in particular for the late phases and the most massive stars (Smith 2014).”
• Simulating galaxy formation with the IllustrisTNG model (2017, background): “…the formation of the dense molecular clouds and stars (Heyer & Dame 2015); the evolution of stellar populations, their winds and energetic feedback (Smith 2014); the explosions of supernovae (Nomoto, Kobayashi & Tominaga 2013); the formation of supermassive black holes and the interaction of…”
• PTF12os and iPTF13bvn. Two stripped-envelope supernovae from low-mass progenitors in NGC 5806 (2016, background): “Two main mechanisms have been suggested to produce SE SNe: either binary mass transfer (e.g., Iben & Tutukov 1985; Yoon et al. 2010; Claeys et al. 2011; Dessart et al. 2012; Yoon 2015) or strong line-driven winds from massive Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars (e.g., Conti 1976; Groh et al. 2013; Smith 2014).”
• PARSEC evolutionary tracks of massive stars up to 350 M ☉ at metallicities 0.0001 ≤ Z ≤ 0.04 (2015, background): “…amount of their mass through line-driven stellar winds and that the mass-loss rates show a simple scaling law with the metallicity (Castor, Abbott & Klein 1975; Kudritzki & Puls 2000; Nugis & Lamers 2000; Vink, de Koter & Lamers 2000, 2001; Muijres et al. 2012b; Crowther 2007; Smith 2014).”
• Spectral models for binary products: Unifying subdwarfs and Wolf-Rayet stars as a sequence of stripped-envelope stars (2018, background): “They are also available for the high-mass end where stripped stars are indistinguishable from Wolf-Rayet stars (Gräfener et al. 2002), which can also be formed from single stars stripped by stellar winds (Conti 1976; Smith 2014; Shenar et al. 2016).”
• MODULES FOR EXPERIMENTS IN STELLAR ASTROPHYSICS (MESA): BINARIES, PULSATIONS, AND EXPLOSIONS (2015, background): “There are many ways M & 8 M stars can end their lives 3 (e.g., Woosley et al. 2002; Smartt 2009; Meynet et al. 2010; Langer 2012; Nomoto et al. 2013; Smith 2014).”