Related papers: The metallicity dependence of WR winds
Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars, as they are advanced stages of the life of massive stars, provide a good test for various physical processes involved in the modelling of massive stars, such as rotation and mass loss. In this paper, we show the…
Understanding the radii of massive stars throughout their evolution is important to answering numerous questions about stellar physics, from binary interactions on the main sequence to the pre-supernova radii. One important factor…
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 present a new empirical prescription for the mass-loss rates of carbon and oxygen sequence Wolf-Rayet stars as a function of their luminosity, surface chemical composition, and initial metallicity. The new prescription is based on…
Given their strong stellar winds, Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars exhibit emission line spectra that are predominantly formed in expanding atmospheric layers. The description of the wind velocity field $v(r)$ is therefore a crucial ingredient in the…
Towards the end of their evolution hot massive stars develop strong stellar winds and appear as emission line stars, such as WR stars or LBVs. The quantitative description of the mass loss in these important pre-SN phases is hampered by…
Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars are massive ($\geq$10 M$_{\odot}$) evolved stars undergoing advanced nuclear burning in their cores, rapidly approaching the end of their lives as supernovae. Their powerful winds enrich the interstellar medium with…
A debate has arisen regarding the importance of stationary versus eruptive mass loss for massive star evolution. The reason is that stellar winds have been found to be clumped, which results in the reduction of unclumped empirical mass-loss…
The first stars are assumed to be predominantly massive. Although, due to the low initial abundances of heavy elements the line-driven stellar winds are supposed to be inefficient in the first stars, these stars may loose a significant…
Mass loss and axial rotation are playing key roles in shaping the evolution of massive stars. They affect the tracks in the HR diagram, the lifetimes, the surface abundances, the hardness of the radiation field, the chemical yields, the…
The recent discovery of a gravitational wave from the merging of two black holes of about 30 solar masses each challenges our incomplete understanding of massive stars and their evolution. Critical ingredients comprise mass-loss, rotation,…
Vigorous mass loss in the classical Wolf-Rayet (WR) phase is important for the late evolution and final fate of massive stars. We develop spherically symmetric time-dependent and steady-state hydrodynamical models of the radiation-driven…
Metallicity is a fundamental physical property that strongly constrains galaxy formation and evolution. The formation of stars in galaxies is suppressed by the energy released from supernova explosions and can be enhanced by metal…
Some useful developments in the model physics are briefly presented, followed by model results on chemical enrichments and WR stars. We discuss the expected rotation velocities of WR stars. We emphasize that the (C+O)/He ratio is a better…
Feedback from Young Massive Clusters (YMCs) is an important driver of galaxy evolution. In the first few Myr, mechanical feedback is dominated by collective effects of the massive stellar winds in the YMC. The mass-loss rates and terminal…
Massive stars and supernovae (SNe) have a huge impact on their environment. Despite their importance, a comprehensive knowledge of which massive stars produce which SNe is hitherto lacking. We use a Monte Carlo method to predict the…
Mass loss through a stellar wind is an important physical process that steers the evolution of massive stars and controls the properties of their end-of-life products, such as the supernova type and the mass of compact remnants. For an…
The amount of mass loss is of fundamental importance to the lives and deaths of very massive stars, the input of chemical elements and momentum into the interstellar and intergalactic media, as well as the emitted ionizing radiation. I…
We review potential mass-loss mechanisms in the various evolutionary stages of massive stars, from the well-known line-driven winds of O-stars and BA-supergiants to the less-understood winds from Red Supergiants. We discuss optically thick…
Context. Oxygen sequence Wolf-Rayet (WO) stars represent a very rare stage in the evolution of massive stars. Their spectra show strong emission lines of helium-burning products, in particular highly ionized carbon and oxygen. The…