The progenitors of Type-IIb supernovae (SNe IIb) are believed to have lost their H-rich envelopes almost completely in the direct pre-SN phase. Recently the first ‘flash spectrum’ of an SN IIb ...(SN 2013cu) has been presented, taken early enough to study its immediate circumstellar medium (CSM). Similar to a previous study by Groh, we analyse the structure and chemical composition of the optically thick CSM using non-local thermodynamic equilibrium(non-LTE) model atmospheres. For the first time, we take light-travel time effects on the spectrum formation into account, which affect the shapes and strengths of the observable emission lines, as well as the inferred SN luminosity. Based on the new CSM parameters, we estimate a lower limit of ∼0.3 M⊙ for the CSM mass, which is a factor 10–100 higher than previous estimates. The spectral fit implies a CSM in the form of a homogeneous and spherically symmetric superwind whose mass-loss rate exceeds common expectations by up to two orders of magnitude. The derived chemical composition is in agreement with a progenitor that has just left, or is just about to leave the Red-Supergiant stage, confirming the standard picture for the origin of SNe IIb. Due to its extreme mass-loss, the SN progenitor will likely appear as extreme RSG, Luminous Blue Variable, or Yellow Hypergiant. The direct detection of a superwind, and the high inferred CSM mass suggest that stellar wind mass-loss may play an important role in the formation of SNe IIb.
Context. The classical Wolf-Rayet (WR) phase is believed to mark the end stage of the evolution of massive stars with initial masses higher than ~25M⊙. Stars in this phase expose their stripped cores ...with the products of H- or He-burning at their surface. They develop strong, optically thick stellar winds that are important for the mechanical and chemical feedback of massive stars, and that determine whether the most massive stars end their lives as neutron stars or black holes. The winds of WR stars are currently not well understood, and their inclusion in stellar evolution models relies on uncertain empirical mass-loss relations. Aims. We investigate theoretically the mass-loss properties of H-free WR stars of the nitrogen sequence (WN stars). Methods. We connected stellar structure models for He stars with wind models for optically thick winds and assessed the degree to which these two types of models can simultaneously fulfil their respective sonic-point conditions. Results. Fixing the outer wind law and terminal wind velocity ν∞, we obtain unique solutions for the mass-loss rates of optically thick, radiation-driven winds of WR stars in the phase of core He-burning. The resulting mass-loss relations as a function of stellar parameters agree well with previous empirical relations. Furthermore, we encounter stellar mass limits below which no continuous solutions exist. While these mass limits agree with observations of WR stars in the Galaxy, they contradict observations in the LMC. Conclusions. While our results in particular confirm the slope of often-used empirical mass-loss relations, they imply that only part of the observed WN population can be understood in the framework of the standard assumptions of a smooth transonic flow and compact stellar core. This means that alternative approaches such as a clumped and inflated wind structure or deviations from the diffusion limit at the sonic point may have to be invoked. Qualitatively, the existence of mass limits for the formation of WR-type winds may be relevant for the non-detection of low-mass WR stars in binary systems, which are believed to be progenitors of Type Ib/c supernovae. The sonic-point conditions derived in this work may provide a possibility to include optically thick winds in stellar evolution models in a more physically motivated form than in current models.
Context. The progenitors of many Type II supernovae have been observationally identified but the search for Type Ibc supernova (SN Ibc) progenitors has thus far been unsuccessful, despite the ...expectation that they are luminous Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars. Aims. We investigate how the evolution of massive helium stars affects their visual appearances, and discuss the implications for the detectability of SN Ibc progenitors. Methods. Evolutionary models of massive helium stars are analysed and their properties compared to Galactic WR stars. Results. Massive WR stars that rapidly lose their helium envelopes through stellar-wind mass-loss end their lives when their effective temperatures – related to their hydrostatic surfaces – exceed about 150 kK. At their pre-supernova stage, their surface properties resemble those of hot Galactic WR stars of WO sub-type. These are visually faint with narrow-band visual magnitudes Mv = −1.5 ··· −2.5, despite their high bolometric luminosities (log L/L⊙ = 5.6···5.7), compared to the bulk of Galactic WR stars (Mv < −4). In contrast, relatively low-mass helium stars that retain a thick helium envelope appear fairly bright in optical bands, depending on the final masses and the history of the envelope expansion during the late evolutionary stages. Conclusions. We conclude that SNe Ibc observations have so far not provided strong constraints on progenitor bolometric luminosities and masses, even with the deepest searches. We also argue that Ic progenitors are more challenging to identify than Ib progenitors in any optical images.
Luminous blue variables (LBVs) are hot, very luminous massive stars displaying large quasi-periodic variations in brightness, radius, and photospheric temperature on timescales of years to decades. ...The physical origin of this variability, called S Doradus cycle after its prototype, has remained elusive. We study the feedback of stellar wind mass-loss on the envelope structure in stars near the Eddington limit. We calculated a time-dependent hydrodynamic stellar evolution, applying a stellar wind mass-loss prescription with a temperature dependence inspired by the predicted systematic increase in mass-loss rates below 25 kK. We find that when the wind mass-loss rate crosses a well-defined threshold, a discontinuous change in the wind base conditions leads to a restructuring of the stellar envelope. The induced drastic radius and temperature changes, which occur on the thermal timescale of the inflated envelope, in turn impose mass-loss variations that reverse the initial changes, leading to a cycle that lacks a stationary equilibrium configuration. Our proof-of-concept model broadly reproduces the typical observational phenomenology of the S Doradus variability. We identify three key physical ingredients that are required to trigger the instability: inflated envelopes in close proximity to the Eddington limit, a temperature range where decreasing opacities do not lead to an accelerating outflow, and a mass-loss rate that increases with decreasing temperature, crossing a critical threshold value within this temperature range. Our scenario and model provide testable predictions, and open the door for a consistent theoretical treatment of the LBV phase in stellar evolution, with consequences for their further evolution as single stars or in binary systems.
Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are manifestations of stars that are deficient in hydrogen and helium, and disrupt in a thermonuclear runaway. While explosions of carbon-oxygen white dwarfs are thought ...to account for the majority of events, part of the observed diversity may be due to varied progenitor channels. We demonstrate that helium stars with masses between ∼1.8 and 2.5
M
⊙
may evolve into highly degenerate cores with near-Chandrasekhar mass and helium-free envelopes that subsequently ignite carbon and oxygen explosively at densities of ∼(1.8−5.9) × 10
9
g cm
−3
. This occurs either due to core growth from shell burning (when the core has a hybrid CO/NeO composition), or following ignition of residual carbon triggered by exothermic electron captures on
24
Mg (for a NeOMg-dominated composition). We argue that the resulting thermonuclear runaway is likely to prevent core collapse, leading to the complete disruption of the star. The available nuclear energy at the onset of explosive oxygen burning suffices to create ejecta with a kinetic energy of ∼10
51
erg, as in typical SNe Ia. Conversely, if these runaways result in partial disruptions, the corresponding transients would resemble SN Iax events similar to SN 2002cx. If helium stars in this mass range indeed explode as SNe Ia, then the frequency of events would be comparable to the observed SN Ib/c rates, thereby sufficing to account for the majority of SNe Ia in star-forming galaxies.
The 30 Doradus star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud is a nearby analog of large star-formation events in the distant universe. We determined the recent formation history and the initial ...mass function (IMF) of massive stars in 30 Doradus on the basis of spectroscopic observations of 247 stars more massive than 15 solar masses (Formula: see text). The main episode of massive star formation began about 8 million years (My) ago, and the star-formation rate seems to have declined in the last 1 My. The IMF is densely sampled up to 200 Formula: see text and contains 32 ± 12% more stars above 30 Formula: see text than predicted by a standard Salpeter IMF. In the mass range of 15 to 200 Formula: see text, the IMF power-law exponent is Formula: see text, shallower than the Salpeter value of 2.35.
We introduce a Hubble Space Telescope (HST)/Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) stellar census of R136a, the central ionizing star cluster of 30 Doradus. We present low resolution ...far-ultraviolet STIS spectroscopy of R136 using 17 contiguous 52 arcsec × 0.2 arcsec slits which together provide complete coverage of the central 0.85 parsec (3.4 arcsec). We provide spectral types of 90 per cent of the 57 sources brighter than m
F555W = 16.0 mag within a radius of 0.5 parsec of R136a1, plus 8 additional nearby sources including R136b (O4 If/WN8). We measure wind velocities for 52 early-type stars from C ivλλ1548–51, including 16 O2–3 stars. For the first time, we spectroscopically classify all Weigelt and Baier members of R136a, which comprise three WN5 stars (a1–a3), two O supergiants (a5–a6) and three early O dwarfs (a4, a7, a8). A complete Hertzsprung–Russell diagram for the most massive O stars in R136 is provided, from which we obtain a cluster age of 1.5
$^{+0.3}_{-0.7}$
Myr. In addition, we discuss the integrated ultraviolet spectrum of R136, and highlight the central role played by the most luminous stars in producing the prominent He ii λ1640 emission line. This emission is totally dominated by very massive stars with initial masses above ∼100 M⊙. The presence of strong He ii λ1640 emission in the integrated light of very young star clusters (e.g. A1 in NGC 3125) favours an initial mass function extending well beyond a conventional upper limit of 100 M⊙. We include montages of ultraviolet spectroscopy for Large Magellanic Cloud O stars in the appendix. Future studies in this series will focus on optical STIS medium resolution observations.
The stellar upper-mass limit is highly uncertain. Some studies have claimed there is a universal upper limit of ~150 M⊙. A factor that is often overlooked is that there might be a significant ...difference between the present-day and the initial masses of the most massive stars – as a result of mass loss. The upper-mass limit may easily supersede ~200 M⊙. For these reasons, we present new mass-loss predictions from Monte Carlo radiative transfer models for very massive stars (VMS) in the mass range 40–300 M⊙, and with very high luminosities 6.0 ≤ log (L ⋆ /L⊙) ≤ 7.03, corresponding to large Eddington factors Γ. Using our new dynamical approach, we find an upturn or “kink” in the mass-loss versus Γ dependence, at the point where the model winds become optically thick. This coincides with the location where our wind efficiency numbers surpass the single-scattering limit of η = 1, reaching values up to η ≃ 2.5. In all, our modelling suggests a transition from common O-type winds to Wolf-Rayet characteristics at the point where the winds become optically thick. This transitional behaviour is also revealed with respect to the wind acceleration parameter, β, which starts at values below 1 for the optically thin O-stars, and naturally reaches values as high as 1.5–2 for the optically thick Wolf-Rayet models. An additional finding concerns the transition in spectral morphology of the Of and WN characteristic He ii line at 4686 Å. When we express our mass-loss predictions as a function of the electron scattering Eddington factor Γe ~ L ⋆ /M ⋆ alone, we obtain an Ṁ vs. Γe dependence that is consistent with a previously reported power law Ṁ\hbox{$\propto\ \Gamma_{\rm e}^{\rm{5}}$}∝Γe5 (Vink 2006) that was based on our previous semi-empirical modelling approach. When we express Ṁ in terms of both Γe and stellar mass, we find optically thin winds and Ṁ ∝ \hbox{$\mstar^{0.68} \Gamma_{\rm e}^{2.2}$}M⋆Γe2.20.68 for the Γe range 0.4 ≲ Γe ≲ 0.7, and mass-loss rates that agree with the standard Vink et al. recipe for normal O stars. For higher Γe values, the winds are optically thick and, as pointed out, the dependence is much steeper, Ṁ ∝ \hbox{$\mstar^{0.78} \Gamma_{\rm e}^{4.77}$}M⋆Γe4.770.78. Finally, we confirm that the effect of Γ on the predicted mass-loss rates is much stronger than for the increased helium abundance, calling for a fundamental revision in the way stellar mass loss is incorporated in evolutionary models for the most massive stars.
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