Seminar by Shelley Cheng, Harvard and CCA
Eruptive mass loss in massive stars has been observed but is poorly understood. Episodes of eruptive mass loss may be associated with opacity peaks in the upper envelope of evolved massive stars. In these regions the local Eddington limit is exceeded, and the resulting modeling the evolution presents several numerical challenges. Additionally, since turbulent pressure support and energy transport (via convection and/or radiative diffusion) is likely important in massive stars, 3D models are required to fully understand the physics of energy transport. However, as 3D MHD simulations impose a high computational cost, 1D codes such as MESA are necessary and useful to develop a better understanding of the parameter space. We present estimated upper limits of eruptive mass loss rates derived from 1D MESA models for stars with masses between 10 − 100 M⊙ and metallicities between Z = 0.001 − 1 Z⊙. Our model applies a simple energy argument to the envelope of massive stars to estimate mass loss, and we compare our estimated mass loss rates to those from existing 3D simulations as well as observations.
Host: Chengcheng Xin