Mass Loss: Its Effect on the Evolution and Fate of High-Mass Stars

“Since massive stars have short lifetimes, their ultraviolet (UV) radiation (reprocessed in various forms) is the most observable tracer of star formation and is used to calculate the star formation rates (Kennicutt 1998, Kennicutt & Evans 2012).”

“Perhaps new open-source codes like MESA (Paxton et al. 2011) will facilitate this.”

“This single-star paradigm then permitted one to extend even further, to compute models for the collective radiative output of entire stellar populations as a function of age (e.g., codes like starburst99; Leitherer et al. 1999).”

“Later, estimates for the solar wind (Parker 1958) powered by hot gas pressure had such low mass-loss rates that winds would not matter much in stellar evolution.”

“Since massive stars have short lifetimes, their ultraviolet (UV) radiation (reprocessed in various forms) is the most observable tracer of star formation and is used to calculate the star formation rates (Kennicutt 1998, Kennicutt & Evans 2012).”

“They leave behind exotic corpses such as black holes, neutron stars, pulsars, magnetars, and all the bizarre high-energy phenomena that occur when compact objects remain bound in a binary system (e.g., Remillard & McClintock 2006).”

“The fact that GRB progenitors have shed most of their envelopes while still retaining a great deal of angular momentum (MacFadyen & Woosley 1999) would seem to strongly favor their origin in binary evolution with mass transfer to spin up the star, or even a merger.”

“…very massive, and they made the first SNe, the first stellar mass black holes, the first dust, ejected the first metals back into the ISM, enhanced or dominated reionization, and probably triggered the formation of the earliest generations of low-mass stars (Bromm & Larson 2004, Heger et al. 2003).”

“…from several young clusters suggest that, when corrected for obervational bias, the fraction of massive stars in binary systems whose orbital period is so short that the stars must exhange mass or merge is something like 3/4 (Kiminki & Kobulnicky 2012, Kobulnicky & Fryer 2007, Sana et al. 2012).”

“This material may have been shed in violent eruptive events decades prior to the SN (see Smith 2014 for a review) or in an enhanced wind in the last ∼103 yr of the progenitor’s life (e.g., Yoon & Cantiello 2010; Smith et al. 2017).”

“Mass loss is, as usual, a dominant uncertainty in models for the evolution of massive stars (Smith 2014), and we explore the sensitivity of our results to the adopted prescriptions for wind mass loss in Appendix A3, and discuss the results of these experiments in Section 3.3.”

“High-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) inform our understanding of the evolution of massive stars, which is still subject to significant uncertainties (Smith 2014).”

“The mass loss has a great influence on the late-time evolution of massive stars and the resultant supernova (SN) (e.g., Smith 2014).”

“The stellar winds of massive stars are crucial for the evolution of these stars, but they are also very uncertain (Smith 2014).”

“…mass on M ZAMS becomes invisible (Heger et al. 2003; Eldridge et al. 2008; Yoon et al. 2010; Smith et al. 2011; Sana et al. 2012; Groh et al. 2013; Smith 2014; Yoon 2015; Yoon et al. 2017; Ouchi & Maeda 2017; El-dridge et al. 2018; Fang et al. 2019; Gilkis & Arcavi 2022; Chen et al. 2023; Drout…”

“Currently, stellar winds, close binary interactions, and nuclear burning instabilities are leading candidates to explain the mass loss (e.g., Claeys et al. 2011; Arnett & Meakin 2011; Quataert & Shiode 2012; Shiode et al. 2013; Groh et al. 2013; Smith 2014; Smith & Arnett 2014; Fuller 2017).”

“With bipolar/disc/torus shapes, multiple shells, or clumpy structure (Andrews et al. 2010, 2016; Smith 2006; Smith et al. 2009a; Smith 2014), the mass-loss rate can be lower than that of spherical symmetry.”

“…for Type IIb SN progenitors (e.g. Heger et al. 2003; Eldridge & Tout 2004; Georgy et al. 2009, 2012; Yoon, Woosley, & Langer 2010; Groh, Georgy, & Ekström 2013; Sravan, Marchant, & Kalogera 2019; Shenar et al. 2020); the results are very sensitive to the adopted mass-loss prescription (Smith 2014).”

“The jury is still out concerning whether SN 2009ip is a true SN (Mauerhan et al. 2013; Smith 2014; Mauerhan et al. 2014; Graham et al. 2014) or an imposter (Pastorello et al. 2013; Margutti et al. 2014; Fraser et al. 2015), but poorly understood mass loss events have clearly played a vital role in…”

“1 IN T RO D U C T I O N The physical processes by which massive stars shed their hydrogen envelopes and become Wolf–Rayet (WR) stars present an interesting challenge to the standard stellar evolutionary paradigm (see review by Smith 2014, and references therein).”

“There are many mechanisms to remove the hydrogen-rich envelope from SN progenitors and the mass loss mechanisms themselves are a largely investigated field of research (Smith 2014).”

“The binary interaction is believed to play a key role for these SNe IIb (e.g., Benvenuto et al. 2013; Ouchi & Maeda 2017) and thus the mass-loss rate is highly affected by the binary interaction (e.g., Smith 2014, for a review).”

“The total number and distribution of their ionizing photons is highly sensitive to the details of stellar evolution and affected by several complex factors that are dif fi cult to model such as mass loss, rotation, and multiplicity ( e.g., Smith 2014 ) .”

“Another factor that significantly a ff ects the evolution of massive stars is mass loss (Smith 2014; Meynet et al. 2015; Groenewegen & Sloan 2018), which is di ffi cult to measure in the RSG phase.”

“See Smith (2014) for a review of mass loss in SE SN progenitors.”

“Type IIn supernovae (SNe IIn) show prominent and narrowto-intermediate width Balmer emission lines in their spectra (Schlegel 1990; Filippenko 1997; Smith 2014; Gal-Yam 2017).”

“Assuming that the velocity of the wind of the progenitor of an SN Ibc is (vw) is 100−1000 km s −1 (see, e.g., Table 1 of Smith 2014), the mass loss rate Ṁ = 4πvwq (q = ρCSM,in,1R 2 CSM,in,1) of the stellar wind is Ṁ ∼ 10.1− 101 M⊙ yr −1, significantly larger than the typical values for most of SN…”

“The progenitor mass is also ambiguous and varies with the subclass of SNe IIn (Smith 2014).”

“The mass loss could be caused by a single star progenitor through episodic eruptions (see Smith 2014, for discussion).”

“The indicated lower explosion energies are consistent with the small amount of 56Ni compared to that of typical SNe (e.g., Smith 2014; Elias-Rosa et al. 2018). tinj has to be selected so that trise takes a maximum for given other parameters.”

“…both used a method similar that used to measure proper motions of protostellar Herbig-Haro jets (Hartigan et al. 2001; Bally et al. 2006; Reiter & Smith 2014; Reiter et al. 2015), wherein small boxes are selected to encompass individual knots or groups of knots and then the cross correlation is…”

“…role during the evolution phases of the progenitors such as stellar wind (Puls, Vink & Najarro 2008), mass transfer in a binary system (Wheeler & Levreault 1985; Podsiadlowski, Joss & Hsu 1992; Yoon, Woosley & Langer 2010; Sana et al., 2012) and mass loss (Smith & Owocki 2006; Smith 2014), etc.”

“A homogeneous wind (i.e., DLMC = 1) does not resolve this discrepancy and would be inconsistent with clumped wind observations (Crowther 2007; Smith 2014).”

“The resulting SN type, which is predominantly based on the existence or absence of H lines, is a direct result of the different amounts of mass-loss the progenitor underwent before explosion (see Smith 2014 for a review).”

“However, if these SNe indeed result from binary interactions, they should be surrounded by a significant amount of CSM, with its mass and distribution likely influenced by the binary separation (Smith 2014).”

“…are often observed especially in Type IIn that display narrow emission lines for extended times after the explosion (e.g. Ofek et al. 2014) as a consequence of the shock interaction between the slow-moving circumstellar medium (CSM) and the Liu et al. ejected material of the explosion (Smith 2014).”

“Mass loss is an important process in massive stars that characterizes their evolution and the appearances of their final supernova (SN) explosions (e.g., Smith 2014).”

“Depending on metallicity and rotation, RSGs of initial mass 20− 40 M⊙ exhibit high mass-loss rates that shift them back to warm temperatures, owing to the inability of the stars o sustain a convective H-rich outer envelope (Ekström et al. 2012; Smith 2014; Meynet et al. 2015).”

“Understanding the mass loss mechanism of asymptotic giant branch (AGB) and red supergiant (RSG) stars is necessary to determine the formation processes of planetary nebulae and corecollapse supernovae (e.g., Herwig 2005; Smith 2014).”

“Above initial masses of ∼20Me, massive stars evolve into a classical Wolf–Rayet (cWR) stage of He-burning, with most of their outer H-rich envelopes removed by stronger winds in an intervening, relatively short, LBV stage (or possibly an RSG stage for the least massive among them; Smith 2014, 2017).”

“10−4 M yr−1; e.g., de Jager et al. 1988; Beasor et al. 2020) but is much lower than required in interaction-powered SNe IIn ( ÛM & 10−3 M yr−1; e.g., Smith 2014, 2017).”

“…concerning the efficiency of both steady and episodic mass loss mechanisms, the physical conditions in the progenitor required to drive mass loss, and exactly when in the stellar life cycle certain mass loss mechanisms are more prevalent (e.g., Quataert & Shiode 2012; Smith 2014; Fuller 2017).”

“Some massive stars can go through very unstable mass-loss phases, ejecting large amounts of matter in energetic eruptions and explosions (Smith 2014).”

“The restrictions on low metallicity might be relaxed somewhat, however, due to modern reductions in empirical mass-loss rates (Smith 2014).”

“Many previous studies have remarked upon an apparent temporal coincidence between eruptive mass loss and core-collapse, especially within the context of interacting (type IIn) SNe (e.g., Smith 2014).”

“The uncertain metallicity dependence of RDWs adds to a hotly debated question: what is the total mass lost throughout the stellar lifetime, and what is the main driving mechanism? Besides RDWs, pulsation- and rotation-driven outflows, evolution and/or mass exchange in binary systems, and eruptions such as those experi…”

“Figure 6 shows the locations in the HR diagram of 13 SNe II-P and II-L as well as five SNe IIb progenitors with preexplosion imaging.”

“Owing to the absence of He and H in their spectra, SN Ic progenitors have been suggested to lose their envelope prior to explosion, either due to stellar winds (Fil-ippenko 1997, and references therein) or through binary interaction (Podsiadlowski et al. 1992; Yoon et al. 2010; Smith 2014).”

“…surrounding CSM. Whileeruptive mass loss in luminous blue variables (LBVs) and strong line-driven winds of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars are well known (see Smith 2014 for a review), for RSGs there have been significant reductions in wind mass-loss prescriptions, and significant mismatch between these…”

“Core-collapse supernovae (SNe) have a large diversity in their photometric and spectroscopic appearances, which reflects the diversity in the progenitor’s evolution and mass loss (e.g. Smartt 2009; Smith 2014).”

“The physical mechanism, energetics and observed properties of these events depend on the structure and terminal mass of the evolved stars at core-collapse, which in turn are determined by stellar mass loss (see, e.g., review by Smith 2014).”

“…the help of the evolutionary models of Ekström et al. (2012), keepingin mind that the models of massive star evolution are very uncertain in the post-main-sequence evolutionary phases because they do not include any eruptive event so that the mass-loss rate recipes are not well known (Smith 2014).”

“The episodic mass loss of LBVs has also been a reference point for interpreting the dense circumstellar material (CSM) around Type IIn supernovae (SNe IIn), which is thought to be indicative of extreme pre-SN eruptions (Smith 2014).”

“…is several orders of magnitude lower than the observed mass-loss rates from dust-forming LBVs during giant eruptions (& 10−3 M⊙ yr−1; Kochanek 2011; Smith 2014); however, the massloss rate and total dust mass in the nebula is consistent with values derived from circumstellar material…”

“Nevertheless the handful of known examples suggest ‘quiescent’ mass-loss rates of ≥ 10 − 5 M (cid:12) , which may increase by an order of magnitude or more in eruptive events(Smith 2014, Shenoy et al. 2016).”

“For more than 10 recently observed SNe Ib/Ic, no direct evidence for their progenitors has been found despite fairly deep observations using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) or other ground-based telescopes (e.g., Eldridge et al. 2013; Smith 2014; Smartt 2015; Van Dyk 2017).”

“Most proposed models are related to hydrod - namic explosions and continuum-driven super-Eddington wids, rather than line-driven stellar winds (Humphreys & Davidson 1994; Smith & Owocki 2006; Smith 2014).”

“E-mail: bharti@aries.res.in † E-mail: jeewan@aries.res.in ‡ E-mail: Michael.DeBecker@uliege.be evolution of the star itself (e.g. Smith 2014) but also has a strong impact on their surroundings (e.g. Fierlinger et al. 2016).”

“…University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society nloaded from https://academ ic.oup.com /m nras/article/490/4/4536/5594019 by guest on 27 M arch 2022 have mass-loss rates in the range of Ṁ∼10−4 to 0.3 M yr−1 in the decades prior to explosion (e.g. Woosley et al. 2002; Smith 2014).”

“Alternatively, the mass loss may be due to interactions in a close binary system ( A. Kashi et al. 2013; N. Soker & A. Kashi 2013; N. Smith 2014; A. Ercolino et al. 2024 ) .”

“Such dense environments can be formed during the brief evolutionary phases of intense mass loss from some massive stars (Smith 2014).”

“The escape velocity of a 10 Me star of radius 70 Re is ∼200 km s −1 and the range of wind velocity of a star of Teff∼ 10,800 K is vw ∼100−300 km s−1 (Drout et al. 2009; Smith 2014; Yoon et al. 2017).”

“…of nuclear burning, wave-driven momentum transport, and neutrino-driven mass loss (e.g., Heger et al. 1997; Yoon & Cantiello 2010; Arnett & Meakin 2011; Quataert & Shiode 2012; Shiode et al. 2013; Moriya 2014; Shiode & Quataert 2014; Smith 2014; Woosley & Heger 2015; Fuller 2017; Wu & Fuller 2021).”

“As stars approach the Eddington limit ( L ∗ ∼ L Edd ), they are thought to lose appreciable mass via continuum-driven winds (e.g., Cheng et al. 2024; Owocki et al. 2004; Smith 2014) as radiation pressure overcomes the pull of gravity.”

“Note that these mass-loss rates are much higher than observed mass-loss rates of massive stars (Smith 2014; Beasor et al. 2020).”

“…into explosion geometry, surrounding environments, and mass loss during the final years of a massive star’s life (e.g., Baron et al. 2000; Brown et al. 2007; Smith 2014; Dessart & Hillier 2022; Jacobson-Gal´an et al. 2022, 2024; Bostroem et al. 2023a,b; Li et al. 2024; Shrestha et al. 2024a,b).”

“Actually, according to Vink and de Koter (2005, see also the review on stellar winds by Smith 2014) iron plays a key role in triggering mass loss in WR stars.”

“…and core collapse supernovae (CCSNe; for a small number of papers from the last five years see, e.g., de Mink et al. 2014; Justham et al. 2014; Smith 2014; Tauris et al. 2015; van den Heuvel et al. 2017; Eldridge et al. 2018; Vigna-Gómez et al. 2018) from binary (and triple) stellar…”