Topic
White dwarf
About: White dwarf is a(n) research topic. Over the lifetime, 15004 publication(s) have been published within this topic receiving 430597 citation(s). The topic is also known as: degenerate dwarf.
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TL;DR: Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA) as mentioned in this paper is a suite of open source, robust, efficient, thread-safe libraries for a wide range of applications in computational stellar astrophysics.
Abstract: Stellar physics and evolution calculations enable a broad range of research in astrophysics. Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA) is a suite of open source, robust, efficient, thread-safe libraries for a wide range of applications in computational stellar astrophysics. A one-dimensional stellar evolution module, MESAstar, combines many of the numerical and physics modules for simulations of a wide range of stellar evolution scenarios ranging from very low mass to massive stars, including advanced evolutionary phases. MESAstar solves the fully coupled structure and composition equations simultaneously. It uses adaptive mesh refinement and sophisticated timestep controls, and supports shared memory parallelism based on OpenMP. State-of-the-art modules provide equation of state, opacity, nuclear reaction rates, element diffusion data, and atmosphere boundary conditions. Each module is constructed as a separate Fortran 95 library with its own explicitly defined public interface to facilitate independent development. Several detailed examples indicate the extensive verification and testing that is continuously performed and demonstrate the wide range of capabilities that MESA possesses. These examples include evolutionary tracks of very low mass stars, brown dwarfs, and gas giant planets to very old ages; the complete evolutionary track of a 1 M ☉ star from the pre-main sequence (PMS) to a cooling white dwarf; the solar sound speed profile; the evolution of intermediate-mass stars through the He-core burning phase and thermal pulses on the He-shell burning asymptotic giant branch phase; the interior structure of slowly pulsating B Stars and Beta Cepheids; the complete evolutionary tracks of massive stars from the PMS to the onset of core collapse; mass transfer from stars undergoing Roche lobe overflow; and the evolution of helium accretion onto a neutron star. MESA can be downloaded from the project Web site (http://mesa.sourceforge.net/).
2,924 citations
TL;DR: Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA) as discussed by the authors is an open source software package for modeling the evolution of stellar structures and composition. But it is not suitable for large-scale systems such as supernovae.
Abstract: We substantially update the capabilities of the open source software package Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA), and its one-dimensional stellar evolution module, MESA star. Improvements in MESA star's ability to model the evolution of giant planets now extends its applicability down to masses as low as one-tenth that of Jupiter. The dramatic improvement in asteroseismology enabled by the space-based Kepler and CoRoT missions motivates our full coupling of the ADIPLS adiabatic pulsation code with MESA star. This also motivates a numerical recasting of the Ledoux criterion that is more easily implemented when many nuclei are present at non-negligible abundances. This impacts the way in which MESA star calculates semi-convective and thermohaline mixing. We exhibit the evolution of 3-8 M ? stars through the end of core He burning, the onset of He thermal pulses, and arrival on the white dwarf cooling sequence. We implement diffusion of angular momentum and chemical abundances that enable calculations of rotating-star models, which we compare thoroughly with earlier work. We introduce a new treatment of radiation-dominated envelopes that allows the uninterrupted evolution of massive stars to core collapse. This enables the generation of new sets of supernovae, long gamma-ray burst, and pair-instability progenitor models. We substantially modify the way in which MESA star solves the fully coupled stellar structure and composition equations, and we show how this has improved the scaling of MESA's calculational speed on multi-core processors. Updates to the modules for equation of state, opacity, nuclear reaction rates, and atmospheric boundary conditions are also provided. We describe the MESA Software Development Kit that packages all the required components needed to form a unified, maintained, and well-validated build environment for MESA. We also highlight a few tools developed by the community for rapid visualization of MESA star results.
2,215 citations
TL;DR: The Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA) project as discussed by the authors provides a one-dimensional stellar evolution module, MESA Star, which can model the evolution of giant planets down to masses as low as one-tenth that of Jupiter.
Abstract: We substantially update the capabilities of the open source software package Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA), and its one-dimensional stellar evolution module, MESA Star. Improvements in MESA Star's ability to model the evolution of giant planets now extends its applicability down to masses as low as one-tenth that of Jupiter. The dramatic improvement in asteroseismology enabled by the space-based Kepler and CoRoT missions motivates our full coupling of the ADIPLS adiabatic pulsation code with MESA Star. This also motivates a numerical recasting of the Ledoux criterion that is more easily implemented when many nuclei are present at non-negligible abundances. This impacts the way in which MESA Star calculates semi-convective and thermohaline mixing. We exhibit the evolution of 3-8 Msun stars through the end of core He burning, the onset of He thermal pulses, and arrival on the white dwarf cooling sequence. We implement diffusion of angular momentum and chemical abundances that enable calculations of rotating-star models, which we compare thoroughly with earlier work. We introduce a new treatment of radiation-dominated envelopes that allows the uninterrupted evolution of massive stars to core collapse. This enables the generation of new sets of supernovae, long gamma-ray burst, and pair-instability progenitor models. We substantially modify the way in which MESA Star solves the fully coupled stellar structure and composition equations, and we show how this has improved MESA's performance scaling on multi-core processors. Updates to the modules for equation of state, opacity, nuclear reaction rates, and atmospheric boundary conditions are also provided. We describe the MESA Software Development Kit (SDK) that packages all the required components needed to form a unified and maintained build environment for MESA. [Abridged]
2,060 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explored the role of mass transfer in the evolution of double degenerate systems and found that low-mass helium/helium pairs are unstable to dynamical time-scale mass transfer and probably coalesce to form helium-burning sdO stars.
Abstract: Close double white dwarfs should arise from the second phase of mass exchagne in close binaries which first encountered mass exchange while the more massive star was crossing the Hertzprung gap. Tidal mass transfer in these double degenerate systems is explored. The sequence of double white dwarf divides naturally into three segments. (1) Low-mass helium/helium pairs are unstable to dynamical time-scale mass transfer and probably coalesce to form helium-burning sdO stars. (2) In helium/carbon-oxygen pairs, mass transfer occurs on the time scale for gravitational radiation losses (approx.10/sup -4/ M/sub sun/ yr/sup -1/); the accreted helium is quickly ignited, and the accretor expands to dimensions characteristic of R CrB stars, engulfing its companion star. (3) Carbon-oxygen/carbon-oxygen pairs are again unstable to dynamical time-scale mass transfer and, since their total masses exceed the Chandrasekhar limit, are destined to become supernovae. Inactive lifetimes in these latter systems between creation and interaction can exceed 10/sup 10/ years. Birthrates of R CrB stars and Type I supernovae by evolution of double white dwarfs are in reasonable agreement with observational estimates.
2,049 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, absolute magnitudes in the B, V, and I bands were derived for nine well-observed Type Ia supernovae, using host galaxy distances estimated via the surface brightness fluctuations or Tully-Fisher methods.
Abstract: Absolute magnitudes in the B, V, and I bands are derived for nine well-observed Type Ia supernovae, using host galaxy distances estimated via the surface brightness fluctuations or Tully-Fisher methods. These data indicate that there is a significant intrinsic dispersion in the absolute magnitudes at maximum light of Type Ia supernovae, amounting to +/- 0.8 mag in B, +/- 0.6 mag in V, and +/- 0.5 mag in I. Moreover, the absolute magnitudes appear to be tightly correlated with the initial rate of decline of the B light curve, with the slope of the correlation being steepest in B and becoming progressively flatter in the V and I bands. This implies that the intrinsic B - V colors of Type Ia supernovae at maximum light are not identical, with the fastest declining light curves corresponding to the intrinsically reddest events. Certain spectroscopic properties may also be correlated with the initial decline rate. These results are most simply interpreted as evidence for a range of progenitor masses, although variations in the explosion mechanism are also possible. Considerable care must be exercised in employing Type Ia supernovae as cosmological standard candles, particularly at large redshifts where Malmquist bias could be an important effect.
1,860 citations