Related papers: Massive stars in advanced evolutionary stages, and…
One of the largest surprises from the LIGO results regarding the first gravitational wave detection (GW 150914) was the fact the black holes (BHs) were "heavy", of order 30 - 40 solar masses. The most promising explanation for this obesity…
The evolution of massive stars in general, massive close binaries in particular depend on processes where, despite many efforts, the physics are still uncertain. Here we discuss the effects of stellar wind as function of metallicity during…
Rotation can have severe consequences for the evolution of massive stars. It is now considered as one of the main parameters, alongside mass and metallicity that determine the final fate of single stars. In massive, fast rotating stars…
The majority of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars represent the stripped cores of evolved massive stars who lost most of their hydrogen envelope. In low metallicity environments, such as the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), stellar winds are weaker and…
The spectacular detection of gravitational waves (GWs) from GW 150914 and its reported association with a gamma-ray burst (GRB) offer new insights into the evolution of massive stars. Here it is shown that no single star of any mass and…
Rotation has become an important element in evolutionary models of massive stars, specifically via the prediction of rotational mixing. Here, we study a sample of stars, including rapid rotators, to constrain such models and use nitrogen…
Context. The majority of massive stars are born with a close binary companion. How this affects their evolution and fate is still largely uncertain, especially at low metallicity. Aims. We derive synthetic populations of massive…
The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) hosts 12 known Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars, seven of which are apparently single. Their formation is a challenge for current stellar evolution models because line-driven winds are generally assumed to be quenched…
Gravitational waves from merging binary black holes can be used to shed light on poorly understood aspects of massive binary stellar evolution, such as the evolution of massive stars (including their mass-loss rates), the common envelope…
The groundbreaking detection of gravitational waves produced by the inspiralling and coalescence of the black hole (BH) binary GW150914 confirms the existence of "heavy" stellar-mass BHs with masses >25 Msun. Initial modelling of the system…
Classical Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars mark an important stage in the late evolution of massive stars. As hydrogen-poor massive stars, these objects have lost their outer layers, while still losing further mass through strong winds indicated by…
We discuss recent models on the evolution of massive stars at very low metallicity including the effects of rotation, magnetic fields and binarity. Very metal poor stars lose very little mass and angular momentum during the main sequence…
The recently discovered burst of gravitational waves GW150914 provides a good new chance to verify the current view on the evolution of close binary stars. Modern population synthesis codes help to study this evolution from two main…
GW190521 challenges our understanding of the late-stage evolution of massive stars and the effects of the pair-instability in particular. We discuss the possibility that stars at low or zero metallicity could retain most of their hydrogen…
The first directly detected gravitational waves (GW 150914) were emitted by two coalescing black holes (BHs) with masses of ~36Msun and ~29Msun. Several scenarios have been proposed to put this detection into an astrophysical context. The…
The majority of massive stars reside in binary systems, which are expected to experience mass transfer during their evolution. However, so far the conditions under which mass transfer leads to a common envelope, and thus possibly to a…
The spin of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars at low metallicity (Z) is most relevant for our understanding of gravitational wave sources such as GW 150914, as well as the incidence of long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Two scenarios have been…
(abridged) The strong winds of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars are important for the mechanical and chemical feedback of the most massive stars and determine whether they end their lives as neutron stars or black holes. In this work we investigate…
In this chapter, after a brief introduction and overview of stellar evolution, we discuss the evolution and nucleosynthesis of very massive stars (VMS: M>100 solar masses) in the context of recent stellar evolution model calculations. This…
The present paper reviews massive star (initial mass smaller than 120 M0) and very massive star (initial mass larger than 120 M0) evolution. I will focus on evolutionary facts and questions that may critically affect predictions of…