Related papers: Developments in physics of massive stars
Almost 100 years ago Sir Arthur Eddington noted that the interiors of stars were inaccessible to observations. The advent of helio- and asteroseismology has completely changed this assessment. Helioseismology has provided very detailed…
The understanding of the evolution of early-type stars is tightly related to that of the effects of rapid rotation. For massive stars, rapid rotation combines with their strong radiation-driven wind. The aim of this paper is to investigate…
The possibility of measuring the internal rotation of the Sun and stars thanks to helio- and asteroseismology offers tremendous constraints on hydro- and magnetohydrodynamical processes acting in stellar interiors. Understanding the…
In this lecture, we give a first introduction to neutron stars, based on fundamental physical principles. After outlining their outstanding macroscopic properties, as obtained from observations, we infer the extreme conditions of matter in…
Massive stars play a major role in the evolution of their host galaxies, and serve as important probes of the distant Universe. It has been established that the majority of massive stars reside in close binaries and will interact with their…
Stellar rotation significantly shapes the evolution of massive stars, yet the interplay of mass and metallicity remains elusive, limiting our capacity to construct accurate stellar evolution models and to better estimate the impact of…
Radio emission has been detected from all the stages of stellar evolution across the HR Diagram. Its presence reveals both astrophysical phenomena and stellar activity which, otherwise, would not be detectable by other means. The…
We study oscillations and instabilities of relativistic stars using perturbation theory in general relativity and take into account the contribution of a dynamic spacetime. We present the oscillation spectrum as well as the critical values…
The physics of stars, their workings and their evolution, is a goldmine of problems in statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. We discuss many examples that illustrate the possibility of deepening student's knowledge of statistical…
We investigate the evolutionary nexus between the morphology and internal kinematics of the central regions of collisional, rotating, multi-mass stellar systems, with special attention to the spatial characterisation of the process of mass…
The element settling due to the combined effects of gravity, thermal gradient, radiative acceleration and concentration gradient may lead to important abundance variations inside the stars, which cannot be neglected in the computations of…
The understanding of the rotational evolution of early-type stars is deeply related to that of anisotropic mass and angular momentum loss. In this paper, we aim to clarify the rotational evolution of rapidly rotating early-type stars along…
We investigate whether angular momentum transport due to unstable pulsation modes can play a significant role in the rotational evolution of massive stars. We find that these modes can redistribute appreciable angular momentum, and moreover…
After a brief review of the observational evidences indicating how the populations of Be stars, red/blue supergiants, Wolf-Rayet stars vary as a function of metallicity, we discuss the implications of these observed trend for our…
We discuss the physics of the $\Omega \Gamma$-- Limit, i.e. when the star is unbound as a result of {\emph{both}} rotation and radiation pressure. We suggest that the $\Omega \Gamma$-- Limit is what makes the Humphreys--Davidson Limit.…
Angular momentum is a key property regulating star formation and evolution. However, the physics driving the distribution of the stellar rotation rates of early-type main-sequence stars is as yet poorly understood. Using our catalog of…
Mass loss and variability are two linked, fundamental properties of evolved stars. In this paper I review our current understanding of these processes, with a particular focus on how observations and models are used to constrain reliable…
Accurate characterization of stellar populations is of prime importance to correctly understand the formation and evolution process of our Galaxy. The field of asteroseismology has been particularly successful in such an endeavor providing…
Asteroseismology is the determination of the interior structures of stars by using their oscillations as seismic waves. Simple explanations of the astrophysical background and some basic theoretical considerations needed in this rapidly…
A general overview of neutrino physics and astrophysics is given, starting with a historical account of the development of our understanding of neutrinos and how they helped to unravel the structure of the Standard Model. We discuss why it…