1D Simulations of Stellar Mass Loss with the MESA Code

Po-Sheng Ou^1,2*, Ken Chen¹

¹Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, Taipei City, Taiwan
²Department of Physics, National Taiwan University, Taipei City, Taiwan

* Presenter:Po-Sheng Ou, email:psou@asiaa.sinica.edu.tw

Mass loss can strongly affect the evolution of massive stars and the types of their supernovae (SNe) progenitors; however, the mass loss rate, as a function of time and stellar properties, is highly uncertain in both theory and observation. To investigate mass loss rates quantitatively, we use the MESA (Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics) code to perform 1D simulations of stellar evolution with mass loss. The input parameters of our simulations are combinations of various stellar masses, metallicities, and mass loss models. Among different input parameters, we compare their resulting evolution of mass loss rate and total amounts of mass loss. We evaluate the effects of stellar mass and metallicity on mass loss, and the consequences of different mass loss mechanics. We also discuss the physics of unusual changes of mass loss rate in some of our models. Furthermore, we show the density profiles of stellar winds in different evolutionary stages, which may be linked to the shaping of circumstellar structures of SNe. These 1D simulation results will be used to build up more realistic 2D and 3D mass loss simulations.

Keywords: Stellar wind, Circumstellar medium