Related papers: Giant branch planetary systems: Dynamical and radi…
Planetary systems can evolve dynamically even after the planets themselves have fully formed, and there is circumstantial evidence that most planetary systems become unstable after the disappearance of the gaseous protoplanetary disk.…
In around 5 gigayears our Sun will grow to a Red Giant and will swallow Earth. The plan is subdivided into two parts: We propose to construct some kind of parasol to shadow Earth. The position of the parasol will be the (inner) Lagrange…
The influence of rotation on the properties of red giants is studied in the context of the asteroseismic modelling of these stars. While red giants exhibit low surface rotational velocities, we find that the rotational history of the star…
Robust age estimates of red giant stars are now possible thanks to the precise inference of their mass based on asteroseismic constraints. However, there are cases where such age estimates can be highly precise yet very inaccurate. An…
The current understanding of galaxy formation is that it proceeds in a 'bottom up' way, with the formation of small clumps of gas and stars that merge hierarchically until giant galaxies are built up. The baryonic gas loses the thermal…
The discovery of many giant planets in close-in orbits and the effect of planetary and stellar tides in their subsequent orbital decay have been extensively studied in the context of planetary formation and evolution theories. Planets…
Binary stars are pairs of stars that are gravitationally bound, providing in some cases accurate measurements of their masses and radii. As such, they serve as excellent testbeds for the theory of stellar structure and evolution. Moreover,…
Stars and planets are the fundamental objects of the Universe. Their formation processes, though related, may differ in important ways. Stars almost certainly form from gravitational collapse and probably have formed this way since the…
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…
The conditions that lead to self-regulated star formation, star bursts and the formation of massive stellar clusters are discussed. Massive stars have a strong impact on their environment, especially on the evolution of dwarf galaxies which…
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…
The physics of massive stars depends (at least) on convection, mass loss by stellar winds, rotation, magnetic fields and multiplicity. We briefly discuss the impact of the first three processes on the stellar yields trying to identify some…
In the present paper we discuss a selection of facts and questions related to observations and evolutionary calculations of massive single stars and massive stars in interacting binaries. We focus on the surface chemical abundances, the…
Most stars, perhaps even all stars, form in crowded stellar environments. Such star forming regions typically dissolve within ten million years, while others remain bound as stellar groupings for hundreds of millions to billions of years,…
Many observed giant planets lie on eccentric orbits. Such orbits could be the result of strong scatterings with other giant planets. The same dynamical instability that produces these scatterings may also cause habitable planets in interior…
Intermediate-mass stars end their lives by ejecting the bulk of their envelope via a slow dense wind back into the interstellar medium, to form the next generation of stars and planets. Stellar pulsations are thought to elevate gas to an…
Core collapse of dense massive star clusters is unavoidable and this leads to the formation of massive objects, with a mass up to 1000 $\msun$ and even larger. When these objects become stars, stellar wind mass loss determines their…
Massive stars becoming red supergiants lose a significant amount of their mass during that brief evolutionary phase. They then either explode as a hydrogen-rich supernova (SN Type II), or continue to evolve as a hotter supergiant (before…
We determine the effect of rotation on the luminosity of supermassive stars. We apply the Roche model to calculate analytically the emitted radiation from a uniformly rotating, radiation-dominated supermassive configuration. We find that…
Binary stars are of course more than two stars, but they are also at least two stars. In this chapter we will review some aspects of the physics governing the evolution of single massive stars. We will also review the uncertainties of key…