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).”

“1 − 1 for metallicities down to 0.01 Z ⊙ (Vink et al. 2001; Smith 2014).”

“Episodic eruptive mass-loss in massive stars has been shown to produce luminous precursory peaks within SN light curves (Smith et al. 2010; Fraser et al. 2013; Smith 2014; Bilinski et al. 2015; Elias-Rosa et al. 2016).”

“Most models for the prototypical IIb SN 1993J were binary based (Nomoto et al. 1996, ⋆ naveen.phys@gmail.com † akr@tifr.res.in ‡ schakraborti@fas.harvard.edu 1993; Ray et al. 1993; Podsiadlowski et al. 1993; Utrobin 1994; Woosley et al. 1994; Smith 2014).”

“We use a grid of Ṁ and E values to compare our VLA upper limits (Table 1) with the flux densities derived from (10).”

“The expelled gas from the companion that predates the supernova was almost certainly clumpy (Hamann et al. 2008; Smith 2014).”

“…which depends on various mass-loss processes from massive stars including radiation-driven winds, episodic mass eruptions, and/or binary interactions (e.g., Smith 2014; Yoon et al. 2017; Davies & Dessart 2019; Vink 2022), so it can be used to infer the mass history of the SN progenitor star.”

“Therefore, BH+He star systems can be observed in the detached stage, and provide more evolutionary details such as the mass-transfer efficiency (Packet 1981; de Mink et al. 2007), and the stellar wind (Puls et al. 2008; Smith 2014; Vink 2017).”

“…possible scenarios for an enhanced mass loss rate during a certain period prior to core-collapse, such as giant eruptions at the envelope, envelope stripping in a binary system by Roche-lobe overflow (RLOF) to a companion star and a possible common envelope phase, and so on (see, e.g., Smith 2014).”

“We assumed a red supergiant as a progenitor and used a range of possible parameters of stellar wind mass loss and wind speed from Smith (2014).”

“The colored regions in Figure 15 correspond to parameter spaces for mass loss from evolved massive stars taken from Smith (2014).”

“…strip the hydrogen envelope to varying degrees (Heger et al. 2003; Eldridge et al. 2008; Yoon et al. 2010; Smith et al. 2011; Sana et al. 2012; Smith 2014; Yoon 2015; Yoon et al. 2017; Ouchi & Maeda 2017; Eldridge et al. 2018; Fang et al. 2019; Zapartas et al. 2019; Laplace et al. 2020; Renzo…”

“…is vital in our simulations; however, it is still highly uncertain (Puls et al. 2008; Sander & Vink 2020), in particular due to the effects of clumping, other unsteady modes of mass loss, and the effects caused by a binary among massive stars (Smith 2014), about which our knowledge is still poor.”

“For example, for low-mass main-sequence (MS) stars like the Sun, the massloss rate is ∼10−14 Me yr −1, whereas for high-mass MS stars, e.g., OB stars, the mass-loss rates are ∼10−6–10−5 Me yr −1 (O stars: e.g., Smith 2014) and ∼10−9 Me yr −1 (B stars: e.g., Krtička 2014).”

“Note that for stellar models, the uncertainty of the wind mass loss rate, especially during the RSG phase (e.g., Smith 2014b; Beasor et al. 2020; Yang et al. 2023) limits the accuracy of the predicted final envelope (and thus ejecta) masses.”

“…onvarious factors, such as progenitor mass, wind velocity and density, and the time between mass-loss events and explosion, a wide rangof luminosities and spectral features can be observed as the SNb gins to interact with the surrounding environment (for a comprehensive overview, see Smith (2014).”

“Although accounting for clumping has been argued to require a reduction to mass-loss rate recipies by factors of 3-5 (see Smith 2014 for a review), the deficits for SN 1987A and SBW1 are greater than this (and again, we did not include a clumping correction for SBW1).”

“For some time, it has been known that wind-driven mass-loss plays a significant role in the evolution of stars, particularly for massive stars whose end fates result in corecollapse supernovae (Chiosi & Maeder 1986; Maeder & Meynet 2000; Woosley et al. 2002; Smith 2014).”

“Mass loss has also an impact on the nature of the supernova event (if any) and on the properties of the stellar remnant (if any) (see e.g. the review by Smith 2014).”

“It is now thought that mass loss from such massive stellar progenitors is clumped (Smith 2014); indeed, observations of radio supernovae show evolving radio spectra which are not always compatible with a smooth progenitor wind (van Dyk et al. 1994; Weiler et al. 2002).”

“These sources are among the SN type IIn progenitors (Smith 2014), which makes their identification and observational follow-up valuable.”

“This could be due to small scale clumping within the stellar wind (Moffat 2008; Smith 2014).”

“Bona fide LBVs form a diverse group of objects (reviews by Humphreys & Davidson 1994 and Smith 2014) and are just one type of intrinsically bright blue variable star.”

“Massive stars generally suffer substantial mass loss during their evolution, and sometimes also near core collapse (e.g. Smith 2014).”

“Observational estimates on the steady mass loss rates from the stars generally depend on the method used to measure them (Smith 2014).”

“These “dynamical ejections” are thought to be responsible for the formation of dense, compact shells detected in SN progenitors such as SN 2009ip ( J. C. Mauerhan et al. 2013; N. Smith 2014 ) .”

“There are two main progenitor theories for SNe Ib/c: either, they are solitaire Wolf-Rayet stars ( M ZAMS ≈ 20 − 25 M ⊙ ; Smith et al. 2011; Smith 2014; Smartt 2015) that became stripped due to strong winds (Conti 1975), or they originate in a close-binary system (Smartt et al. 2009; Eldridge et al. 2013; Yoon 2015; S…”

“…envelope (Crowther 2007; Georgy 2012; Yoon 2015) in single massive star models and mass transfer via a binary companion is a preferred path in the binary stellar evolution models (Podsiad-lowski 1992; Nomoto et al. 1995; Claeys et al. 2011; Smith 2014; Sravan et al. 2020; Dessart et al. 2024).”

“…star can occur in various ways, including stellar winds, episodic mass eruptions, and binary interactions ( e.g., Podsiadlowski et al. 1992, 1993; Stancliffe & Eldridge 2009; Yoon & Cantiello 2010; Claeys et al. 2011; Smith 2014; Meynet et al. 2015; Yoon et al. 2017; Eldridge et al. 2018 ) .”

“The precise mechanism driving mass loss is still unclear, and it may involve a combination of radiation pressure and radial pulsation (Wilson et al. 2000; Verhoelst et al. 2009; Smith 2014; H¨ofner & Olofsson 2018).”

“The narrow lines are believed to form in the dense circumstellar medium with the velocity of ∼ 10 2 km s − 1 (e.g., Smith 2014, 2017).”

“…ionizing emission from massive stars is difficult to model as their evolutionary path and properties depend on the details of mass loss ( e.g., N. Smith 2014; C. C. Steidel et al. 2016; P. Senchyna et al. 2021 ) , and factors like rotation and multiplicity can affect how long they live, how many…”

“These precursor events are believed to reflect a variable mass-loss history of the progenitor star (e.g., Smith 2014).”

“Luminous blue variable (LBV) stars are believed to have evolved from high-mass main-sequence stars and to become eventually Wolf-Rayet stars after various magnitudes of mass-loss (e.g., Langer et al. 1994; Meynet et al. 2011; Smith 2014 and references therein).”

“Although the physical mechanism behind this phenomenon is not yet understood, the energy deposition into the envelope just before the core collapse has been proposed as a possible cause (Dessart et al. 2010; Smith 2014).”

“Smith (2014) estimated the stellar wind velocities due to mass loss at each stage of stellar evolution to be 20–40 km s−1 and 30–100 km s−1 for YSG and YHG, respectively.”

“10−9.5 M yr −1 (Smith 2014).”

“After the explosion, the SN shock waves expand into the surrounding CSM (see reviews by Smith 2014).”

“This type of shell can result, for example, when a post-red supergiant (post-RSG) star has developed a fast wind during an LBV phase which sweeps up gas and dust lost during the previous RSG phase or by a previously ejected LBV shell that is swept up by the post eruption wind (Smith 2014).”

“However, the high radiation from SN can accelerate stellar winds to much higher speeds [75].”

“The progressive loss of specific spectral features reflects different degrees of envelope stripping by line-driven winds and/or binary mass transfer of their progenitors (Yoon et al. 2010; Langer 2012; Smith 2014; Sun et al. 2023a).”

“This leaves a thin hydrogen layer that requires extreme solar winds to be removed (Smith 2014; Trani et al. 2014).”

“Prior to exploding, the progenitors of typical SNe can undergo significant mass-loss episodes, resulting in the buildup of a dense shell of CSM surrounding the progenitor (Smith 2014).”

“…via Roche-lobe overflow (RLOF) can be of order ∼ 10 − 3 M ⊙ yr − 1 or higher (Taam & Sandquist 2000; Langer 2012; Smith 2014), while the thermal (Kelvin-Helmholtz) timescale τ KH of the envelope is ∼ 10 4 yr (Smith 2014, the value of τ KH can be estimated by using Equation 10 of Paczyński 1971).”

“Sample studies of SNe IIn have reported progenitor mass-loss rates of 10 − to > 1 M ⊙ yr − (Smith 2014, 2017), far exceeding expectations for line-driven stellar winds and ostensibly supporting an eruptive origin with unclear underlying physics.”

“The uncertainties in determining the mass-losrates for massive stars are still large even in the local Universe (Smith 2014).”

“Massive progenitors of SNe II lose mass and then produce CSM by means of stellar winds, impulsive eruptions, or mass transfer between interacting binaries[86].”

“And, considering that the East Cloud is located at the eastern outer edge of the remnant, the ejection velocity should have been much higher than 30 km s−1 or the typical wind velocity of red supergiant stars, e.g., 10–20 km s−1 (Smith 2014).”

“The mass-loss rates during the initial stages of evolution in turn strongly affect the subsequent evolutionary phase of these massive stars (Smith 2014).”

“For a comprehensive introduction on the stellar massloss, please see the review by Smith (2014).”

“In addition, the mass-loss rate of massive stars is still uncertain, and it is not clear whether all massive stars with ZAMS mass& 25 M¯ can strip their H envelope (Smith 2014).”