Related papers: Open questions in massive star research

In spite of significant recent and ongoing research efforts, most of the early evolution and long-term fate of young massive star clusters remain clouded in uncertainties. Here, I discuss our understanding of the initial conditions of star…

The contact phase represents a crossroad in the evolution of massive binary stars. Depending on the internal physics, the predicted end products can vary greatly including various exotic objects such as Be stars, magnetic massive stars,…

Stellar astrophysicists are increasingly taking into account the effects of orbiting companions on stellar evolution. New discoveries, many thanks to systematic time-domain surveys, have underlined the role of binary star interactions in a…

Massive stars are the engines of the Cosmos, shaping their environments and driving galaxy evolution across cosmic time. Yet, this general textbook picture faces many challenges when trying to turn abstract insights into quantitative…

Planets and other low-mass binary companions to stars face a variety of potential fates as their host stars move off the main sequence and grow to subgiants and giants. Stellar mass loss tends to make orbits expand, and tidal torques tend…

We review the current basic picture of the evolution of massive stars and how their evolution and structure changes as a function of initial mass. We give an overview of the fate of modern (Pop I) and primordial (Pop III) stars with…

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…

Low-mass stars play a key role in many different areas of astrophysics. In this article, I provide a brief overview of the evolution of low-mass stars, and discuss some of the uncertainties and problems currently affecting low-mass stellar…

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…

How massive stars end their lives depends on the core mass, core angular momentum, and hydrogen envelopes at death. However, these key physical facets of stellar evolution can be severely affected by binary interactions. In turn, the…

What happens to a massive star at the end of its life cycle is one of the most important and intriguing questions in theoretical physics. An unhindered gravitational collapse of such a sufficiently massive star can give rise to a spacetime…

The recent gravitational wave measurements have demonstrated the existence of stellar mass black hole binaries. It is essential for our understanding of massive star evolution to identify the contribution of binary evolution to the…

Massive stars are the drivers of star formation and galactic dynamics due to their relatively short lives and explosive demises, thus impacting all of astrophysics. Since they are so impactful on their environments, through their winds on…

I present the results of radiation-driven mass-loss predictions for hot stars of all mass. Mass loss is an important aspect for the evolution of massive stars, the rotational properties of the progenitors of gamma-ray bursts, and is…

Massive stars are key ingredients in the evolution of the Universe. Yet, important uncertainties and limits persist in our understanding of these objects, even in their early phases, limiting their application as tools to interpret the…

High-mass stars are major players in the chemical and dynamical evolution of galaxies. Open clusters and associations represent the natural laboratories to study their evolution. In this review, I will present a personal selection of…

Very massive stars are radiation pressure dominated. Before running out of viable nuclear fuel, they can reach a thermodynamic state where electron-positron pair-production robs them of radiation support, triggering their collapse.…

Massive stars played a key role in the early evolution of the Universe. They formed with the first halos and started the re-ionisation. It is therefore very important to understand their evolution. In this review, we first recall the effect…

Rapidly accreting massive protostars undergo a phase of deuterium shell burning during pre-main sequence evolution that causes them to swell to tenths of an AU in radius. During this phase, those with close binary companions will overflow…

The evolution of close binary stars in mass asymmetry (transfer) coordinate is considered. The conditions for the formation of stable symmetric binary stars are analyzed. The role of symmetrization of asymmetric binary star in the…