The formation and evolution of very massive stars in dense stellar systems

Abstract

The early evolution of dense stellar systems is governed by massive single star and binary evolution. Core collapse of dense massive star clusters can lead to the formation of very massive objects through stellar collisions ($M\ge$ 1000 \msun). Stellar wind mass loss determines the evolution and final fate of these objects, and decides upon whether they form black holes (with stellar or intermediate mass) or explode as pair instability supernovae, leaving no remnant. We present a computationaly inexpensive evolutionary scheme for very massive stars that can readily be implemented in an N-body code. Using our new N-body code 'Youngbody' which includes a detailed treatment of massive stars as well as this new scheme for very massive stars, we discuss the formation of intermediate mass and stellar mass black holes in young starburst regions. A more detailed account of these results can be found in Belkus et al. 2007.

2 pages, 2 figures. To appear in conference proceedings for IAUS246, 2007

References in corpus (5)

• How Massive Single Stars End their Life
• Line-driven winds, ionizing fluxes and UV-spectra of hot stars at extremely low metallicity. I. Very massive O-stars
• A Porosity-Length Formalism for Photon-Tiring-Limited Mass Loss from Stars Above the Eddington Limit
• The evolution of very massive stars
• Similarity theory of stellar models and structure of very massive stars