Abstract

Contributed Talk - Splinter CloseBinaries   (MW-0250)

The role of massive star eruptions on stellar and binary evolution

D. Pauli
KU Leuven

Massive stars are the key engines of the Universe. However, their evolution and thus their feedback are still not fully understood. One of the largest gaps in current stellar evolution calculations is the lack of a model for the mass ejections that occur when the stars reach the Eddington limit, such as during an Luminous Blue Variable (LBV) phase. In this talk, I will present my recent work on a new physically motivated and empirically calibrated method to approximate the effect of such mass-loss on the evolution of massive stars. I will show how the inclusion of this method impacts our general understanding of the stars within a stellar population, and how my models compare to the observed populations of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds for single and binary stars. In detail, I will demonstrate that the inclusion of such mass ejections help to explain (i) the absence of stars located beyond the Humphreys-Davidson limit, (ii) the observed upper limit of RSG luminosities, (iii) the faintest observed single WR stars in low metallicity populations, (iv) the absolute number of O-stars, WRs, and RSGs in these galaxies, and (v) their binary properties.