On the Role of Continuum-driven Eruptions in the Evolution of Very Massive Stars and Population III Stars

By N. Smith, S. Owocki. 2006

343 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We suggest that the mass lost during the evolution of very massive stars may be dominated by optically thick, continuum-driven outbursts or explosions, instead of by steady line-driven winds. In order for a massive star to become a Wolf-Rayet star, it must shed its hydrogen envelope, but new estimates of the effects of clumping in winds from O-type stars indicate that line driving is vastly insufficient. We discuss massive stars above roughly 40-50 M☉, which do not become red supergiants and for which the best alternative is mass loss during brief eruptions of luminous blue variables (LBVs). Our clearest example of this phenomenon is the 19th century outburst of η Carinae, when the star shed 12-20 M☉ or more in less than a decade. Other examples are circumstellar nebulae of LBVs and LBV candidates, extragalactic η Car analogs (the so-called supernova impostors), and massive shells around supernovae and gamma-ray bursters. We do not yet fully understand what triggers LBV outbursts or what supplies their energy, but they occur nonetheless, and they present a fundamental mystery in stellar astrophysics. Since line opacity from metals becomes too saturated, the extreme mass loss probably arises from a continuum-driven wind or a hydrodynamic explosion, both of which are insensitive to metallicity. As such, eruptive mass loss could have played a pivotal role in the evolution and ultimate fate of massive metal-poor stars in the early universe. If they occur in these Population III stars, such eruptions would also profoundly affect the chemical yield and types of remnants from early supernovae and hypernovae thought to be the origin of long gamma-ray bursts.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a80ed78089c65ffbcb6820bbc7e150f8dc7e2743

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. N. Smith
2. S. Smartt
3. Stan Woosley
4. E. Berger
5. A. Filippenko
6. N. Langer
7. Michela Mapelli
8. C. Conroy

In Instrumentation

1. N. Smith
2. S. Smartt
3. C. Conroy
4. N. Langer
5. Stan Woosley
6. P. Hopkins
7. J. Eldridge
8. Robert G. Izzard

Citations in the corpus

• A Survey About Nothing: Monitoring a Million Supergiants for Failed Supernovae (2008, background): “A number of extragalactic η Carina-like outbursts have already been identified (the “SN impostors”; see Smith & Owocki 2006 and references therein).”
• SN 2006jc: A Wolf-Rayet Star Exploding in a Dense He-rich Circumstellar Medium (2006, background): “They are thought to be the descendants of stars that begin their lives with initial masses140M,, which have already shed their H envelopes during a luminous blue variable (LBV) stage (Smith & Owocki 2006), exposing their He cores (for a review, see Abbott & Conti 1987).”
• The empirical metallicity dependence of the mass-loss rate of O- and early B-type stars (2007, background): “This could drop by a factor of three, requiring the objects to lose ten to tens of solar masses by other means in order to evolve towards the hot Wolf-Rayet phase (Smith & Owocki 2006).”
• SPECTRAL EVOLUTION OF THE EXTRAORDINARY TYPE IIn SUPERNOVA 2006gy (2009, background): “Lower mass-loss rates for the 3–5 Myr on the main sequence could substantially increase a star’s final mass. Smith & Owocki (2006) pointed out that LBV eruptions may help make up some of the deficit, but if insufficient, the star can explode as an LBV with part of its H envelope still intact.”
• Mass Loss: Its Effect on the Evolution and Fate of High-Mass Stars (2014, methodology): “Masses of LBV nebulae occupy a very large range from ∼20 M⊙ at the upper end down to 0.1 M⊙, although even smaller masses become difficult to detect Mass Loss 17 Masses of circumstellar shells around LBVs and LBV-like stars, as a function of luminosity, from Smith & Owocki (2006).”
• Luminous blue variables are antisocial: their isolation implies that they are kicked mass gainers in binary evolution (2014, background): “When examining the SN host color at the location of SNe rather than host Hα, Kelly & Kirshner (2012) found that SNe Ibc, SNe II, and SNe IIn show basically the same distribution of u′ − z′ colors.”
• Luminous blue variable eruptions and related transients: diversity of progenitors and outburst properties (2010, background): “With the high mass-loss rates required for LBV eruptions, the material must be optically thick and therefore continuum driven or hydrodynamically launched, rather than line driven (Smith & Owocki 2006; van Marle et al. 2008).”
• INTERACTING SUPERNOVAE AND SUPERNOVA IMPOSTORS: SN 2009ip, IS THIS THE END? (2012, methodology): “Based on analysis of SN data, a link between some LBVs and SNe IIn has been proposed (see e.g. Kotak & Vink 2006; Smith & Owocki 2006; Smith et al. 2007; Trundle et al. 2008, 2009).”
• Mass loss from hot massive stars (2008, background): “Moreover, we know that even in the present-day Universe a significant amount of mass is lost in LBV type eruptions (potentially driven bycontinuum radiation pressure, see page 56) which might be also relevant for the First Stars (Vink and de Koter 2005, Smith and Owocki 2006).”
• SN 2006gy: Discovery of the Most Luminous Supernova Ever Recorded, Powered by the Death of an Extremely Massive Star like η Carinae (2006, background): “They may dominate the mass loss of the most massive stars, shedding more total mass than line-driven winds during the star’s lifetime (Smith & Owocki 2006).”
• Pan-STARRS1 DISCOVERY OF TWO ULTRALUMINOUS SUPERNOVAE AT z ≈ 0.9 (2011, background): “Such a mass loss event, expelling several solar masses in the year before stellar death, is extreme, although such episodes are seen for luminous blue variables (LBVs; e.g., Davidson & Humphreys 1997; Smith & Owocki 2006).”
• DISCOVERY OF PRECURSOR LUMINOUS BLUE VARIABLE OUTBURSTS IN TWO RECENT OPTICAL TRANSIENTS: THE FITFULLY VARIABLE MISSING LINKS UGC 2773-OT AND SN 2009ip (2009, background): “LBVs represent a highly unstable, rapid mass-loss phase in the late evolution of massive stars (see Smith & Owocki 2006; Smith et al. 2004; Humphreys & Davidson 1994), which is still poorly understood.”
• MESA ISOCHRONES AND STELLAR TRACKS (MIST). I. SOLAR-SCALED MODELS (2016, background): “Eruptive episodic mass loss episodes and/or binaries are likely to play a role (e.g., Smith & Owocki 2006; Yoon & Cantiello 2010; Sana et al. 2012), but neither phenomenon can be realistically captured in a simple recipe for implementation in a 1D stellar evolution code.”
• SN 2006tf: Precursor Eruptions and the Optically Thick Regime of Extremely Luminous Type IIn Supernovae (2008, background): “Even the factor of 10 lower mass-loss rate of 0.1–0.2 M⊙ yr −1 needed in the decades before that for SN 2006tf is still 1000 times stronger than the maximum rate that can be supplied by a line-driven wind of a massive star (Smith & Owocki 2006).”
• PARSEC evolutionary tracks of massive stars up to 350 M ☉ at metallicities 0.0001 ≤ Z ≤ 0.04 (2015, background): “This eruptive mechanism is still unknown but the observed rates could be explained by a super-Eddington wind (Smith & Owocki 2006), or by non-disruptive hydrodynamic explosions (Barsukova et al. 2014).”
• Observational Constraints on the Progenitors of Core-Collapse Supernovae: The Case for Missing High-Mass Stars (2015, background): “…(in the case of WN stars) and also helium layers (in the case of WC and WO stars) primarily through radiatively driven winds, (Kudritzki & Puls 2000; Vink & de Koter 2005) or episodic mass-loss (Smith & Owocki 2006) or through rapid rotation and chemical homogenous evolution (Yoon & Langer 2005).”
• HIGH-DENSITY CIRCUMSTELLAR INTERACTION IN THE LUMINOUS TYPE IIn SN 2010jl: THE FIRST 1100 DAYS (2013, result): “With a dust to gas ratio of 1:100 this is consistent with the total mass lost in giant LBV eruptions (Smith & Owocki 2006).”
• Toward Understanding Massive Star Formation (2007, background): “…on short timescales (days to years), such as episodic FU Orionis-like accretion (Chini, private communication) and stellar mergers (Bally & Zinnecker 2005), or η Car-like LBV eruptions (Smith & Owocki 2006) and even infrared supernovae in luminous starburst galaxies (Maiolino et al. 2002).”
• Evolution of interstellar dust and stardust in the solar neighbourhood (2007, methodology): “:3) ejected by repeated giant eruptions during an LBV-phase, such as observed in η Car (cf. Smith & Owocki 2006).”