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Astronomy Colloquium

Crab Nebula Supernova Remnant
October 6, 2016
2:30PM - 3:30PM
1080 Physics Research Building

Date Range
Add to Calendar 2016-10-06 14:30:00 2016-10-06 15:30:00 Astronomy Colloquium The Evolution and Explosion of Massive StarsTuguldur Sukhbold - The Ohio State UniversityHow a massive star ends its life depends upon how that life has been lived - the rotation, mass and composition it was born with, mass loss and exchange, and the complex convective and nuclear burning episodes it experienced along the way. In the end, the presupernova stellar core has a density structure that can be characterized by its "compactness" - essentially how fast the density declines outside the iron core. The likelihood that a massive star explodes, by any means, is sensitive to this compactness. It turns out, perhaps surprisingly, that the compactness is not a monotonic function of the star's birth mass, and, in some mass regions, whether the star explodes or not is almost random. In this talk, I will review the underlying stellar physics for the development of presupernova core compactness, and will present explosion results from a fine grid of masses by assuming neutrino-powered mechanism. Unlike all of the prior explorations, in this survey we give up the "luxury" of exploding a star in any way we want, instead, the resulting nucleosynthesis yields, explosion light curves and remnant masses are all uniquely tied to the progenitor structure. Coffee and donuts served in 4054 McPherson Lab at 2:00pm  1080 Physics Research Building Department of Astronomy astronomy@osu.edu America/New_York public

The Evolution and Explosion of Massive Stars

Tuguldur Sukhbold - The Ohio State University

How a massive star ends its life depends upon how that life has been lived - the rotation, mass and composition it was born with, mass loss and exchange, and the complex convective and nuclear burning episodes it experienced along the way. In the end, the presupernova stellar core has a density structure that can be characterized by its "compactness" - essentially how fast the density declines outside the iron core. The likelihood that a massive star explodes, by any means, is sensitive to this compactness. It turns out, perhaps surprisingly, that the compactness is not a monotonic function of the star's birth mass, and, in some mass regions, whether the star explodes or not is almost random. In this talk, I will review the underlying stellar physics for the development of presupernova core compactness, and will present explosion results from a fine grid of masses by assuming neutrino-powered mechanism. Unlike all of the prior explorations, in this survey we give up the "luxury" of exploding a star in any way we want, instead, the resulting nucleosynthesis yields, explosion light curves and remnant masses are all uniquely tied to the progenitor structure. 

Coffee and donuts served in 4054 McPherson Lab at 2:00pm