Evolution and final fates of massive stars

Abstract

Massive stars are able to pursue their evolution through the whole sequence of burning phases. They are born hot and luminous, and live a short life before exploding as a supernova or collapsing directly into a black hole. They have a strong impact on their surrounding, injecting mechanical energy, ionising radiation, and nucleosynthetic products in the interstellar medium. They are the driver of galaxy evolution and trigger star formation. Their high luminosity makes them visible in distant galaxies, and some of them are standard candles we use to root the distance ladder of the Universe. This chapter describes the status of our knowledge about massive stars and the nucleosynthetic path they go through the different phases of their evolution.

13 pages, 4 figures. This is a pre-print of a chapter for the Encyclopedia of Astrophysics (edited by I. Mandel, section editor F.R.N. Schneider) to be published by Elsevier as a Reference Module