Very Massive Stars in the Local Universe

Abstract

Recent studies suggest the existence of very massive stars (VMS) up to 300 solar masses in the local Universe. As this finding may represent a paradigm shift for the canonical stellar upper-mass limit of 150 solar masses, it is timely to evaluate the physics specific to VMS, which is currently missing. For this reason, we decided to construct a book entailing both a discussion of the accuracy of VMS masses (Martins), as well as the physics of VMS formation (Krumholz), mass loss (Vink), instabilities (Owocki), evolution (Hirschi), and fate (theory -- Woosley & Heger; observations -- Smith).

8 pages, Introductory Chapter to the Book on Very Massive Stars in the Local Universe, Springer, Ed. Jorick S. Vink

Cited by in corpus (48)

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• Electromagnetic Counterparts to Black Hole Mergers Detected by LIGO
• Forming short-period Wolf-Rayet X-ray binaries and double black holes through stable mass transfer
• Superluminous supernovae
• The Progenitor of GW 150914
• Theory and Diagnostics of Hot Star Mass Loss
• The R136 star cluster dissected with Hubble Space Telescope/STIS. II. Physical properties of the most massive stars in R136
• Metallicity-dependent wind parameter predictions for OB stars
• The VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey XXI. Stellar spin rates of O-type spectroscopic binaries
• The metallicity dependence of envelope inflation in massive stars
• Fast evolving pair-instability supernova models: evolution, explosion, light curves
• The Efficiency of Stellar Reionization: Effects of Rotation, Metallicity, and Initial Mass Function
• Properties of the stochastic astrophysical gravitational wave background: astrophysical sources dependencies
• Two bi-stability jumps in theoretical wind models for massive stars and the implications for Luminous Blue Variable supernovae
• Possible pair-instability supernovae at solar metallicity from magnetic stellar progenitors
• The Most Luminous Supernovae
• INFERNO: Galactic winds in dwarf galaxies with star-by-star simulations including runaway stars
• Subsonic structure and optically thick winds from Wolf--Rayet stars
• Weighing Melnick 34: the most massive binary system known
• Spectroscopic evolution of very massive stars at Z = 1/2.5 Zsun
• How do disks and planetary systems in high-mass open clusters differ from those around field stars?
• Testing Gravitational Memory Generation with Compact Binary Mergers
• Wolf-Rayet spin at low metallicity and its implication for Black Hole formation channels
• A Single Progenitor Model for GW150914 and GW170104
• Filling the Black Hole Mass Gap: Avoiding Pair Instability in Massive Stars through Addition of Non-Nuclear Energy
• Inferring the presence of very massive stars in local star-forming regions
• Deep GeMS/GSAOI near-infrared observations of N159W in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• How common is LBV S Dor variability at low metallicity?
• SN 2017ivv: two years of evolution of a transitional Type II supernova
• Extreme broad He\2 emission at high and low redshifts: the dominant role of VMS in NGC 3125-A1 and CDFS131717
• The Tarantula Massive Binary Monitoring project: II. A first SB2 orbital and spectroscopic analysis for the Wolf-Rayet binary R145
• Mass loss and stellar superwinds
• The Discovery of a Very Massive Star in W49
• How much radioactive nickel does ASASSN-15lh require?
• The sharp ALMA view of infall and outflow in the massive protocluster G31.41+0.31
• Detection of LIGO-Virgo binary black holes in the pair-instability mass gap
• Disentangling the Black Hole Mass Spectrum with Photometric Microlensing Surveys
• Massive open star clusters using the VVV survey IV. WR 62-2, a new very massive star in the core of the VVV CL041 cluster
• On the diversity of strongly-interacting Type IIn supernovae
• The Neutrino Signal From Pair Instability Supernovae
• The winking eye of a very massive star: WR 21a revealed as an eclipsing binary by TESS
• Wind Collision and Accretion Simulations of the Massive Binary System HD 166734
• Very massive stars at low metallicity: evolution, synthetic spectroscopy, and impact on the integrated light of starbursts
• The VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey
• Spatially resolved properties for extremely metal-poor star-forming galaxies with Wolf-Rayet features and high-ionization lines
• Methods to Test the Source of the Extreme Gas Motions in WS 35
• Progenitors of Core-Collapse Supernovae
• EDGE-INFERNO: How chemical enrichment assumptions impact the individual stars of a simulated ultra-faint dwarf galaxy