Related papers: Can very massive stars avoid Pair-instability Supe…
Massive stars that end their lives with helium cores in the range of 35 to 65 Msun are known to produce repeated thermonuclear outbursts due to a recurring pair-instability. In some of these events, solar masses of material are ejected in…
Near-solar metallicity (and low-redshift) Pair-Instability Supernova (PISN) candidates challenge stellar evolution models. Indeed, at such a metallicity, even an initially very massive star generally loses so much mass by stellar winds that…
Massive Population III stars from 140 - 260 solar masses ended their lives as pair-instability supernovae (PISNe), the most energetic thermonuclear explosions in the universe. Detection of these explosions could directly constrain the…
We revisit the stability of very massive nonrotating main-sequence stars at solar metallicity, with the goal of understanding whether radial pulsations set a physical upper limit to stellar mass. Models of up to 938 solar masses are…
A fraction of the first generation of stars in the early Universe may be very massive ($\gtrsim 300~\mathrm{M_\odot}$) as they form in metal-free environments. Formation of black holes from these stars can be accompanied by supermassive…
The issue of which stars may reach the conditions of electron/positron pair formation instability is of importance to understand the final evolution both of the first stars and of contemporary stars. The criterion to enter the pair…
Nonrotating, zero metallicity stars with initial masses 140 < M < 260 solar masses are expected to end their lives as pair-production supernovae (PPSNe), in which an electron-positron pair-production instability triggers explosive nuclear…
This chapter concentrates on the deaths of very massive stars, the events leading up to their deaths, and how mass loss affects the resulting death. The previous three chapters emphasized the theory of wind mass loss, eruptions, and core…
A linear stability analysis of models for evolved primordial stars with masses between 150 and 250 M$_{\odot}$ is presented. Strange mode instabilities with growth rates in the dynamical range are identified for stellar models with…
Recent stellar evolution models show consistently that very massive metal-free stars evolve into red supergiants shortly before they explode. We argue that the envelopes of these stars, which will form pair-instability supernovae, become…
[Abridged] We present a new grid of massive population III star models including the effects of rotation on the stellar structure and chemical mixing, and magnetic torques for the transport of angular momentum. Based on the grid, we also…
The discovery of the extremely luminous supernova SN 2006gy, possibly interpreted as a pair instability supernova, renewed the interest in very massive stars. We explore the evolution of these objects, which end their life as pair…
There is observational evidence that supports the existence of Very Massive Stars in the local universe. First, very massive stars (Mini<=320 M) have been observed in the Large Magellanic Cloud . Second, there are observed SNe that bear the…
Pair Instability Supernovae have been suggested as candidates for some Super Luminous Supernovae, such as SN 2007bi, and as one of the dominant types of explosion occurring in the early Universe from massive, zero-metallicity Population III…
New particles coupled to the Standard Model can equilibrate in stellar cores if they are sufficiently heavy and strongly coupled. In this work, we investigate the astrophysical consequences of such a scenario for massive stars by…
Variability and mass-loss are common phenomena in massive OB-type stars. It is argued that they are caused by violent strange mode instabilities identified in corresponding stellar models. We present a systematic linear stability analysis…
The formation of supermassive Population III stars with masses $\gtrsim$ 10,000 Msun in primeval galaxies in strong UV backgrounds at $z \sim$ 15 may be the most viable pathway to the formation of supermassive black holes by $z \sim$ 7.…
We investigate the evolution, final fate, and nucleosynthetic yields of rotating and non-rotating very massive stars (VMS) of zero metallicity. First we address the issue of mass loss during hydrogen burning due to vibrational…
We calculate new evolutionary models of rotating primordial very massive stars, with initial mass from $100\,M_{\odot}$ to $200\,M_{\odot}$, for two values of the initial metallicity ${Z=0}$ and ${Z=0.0002}$. For the first time in this mass…
Massive stars reside predominantly in triples or higher-order multiples. Their lives can be significantly affected by three-body interactions, making it an important area of study in the context of massive star evolution. In this study we…