The Evolution of Carbon Burning Flames Inside Super-Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars
Abstract
We explore how carbon burning impacts the bifurcation region separating stars whose final fate is a massive white dwarf from stars whose final fate is a massive star supernova. A dense grid of models with initial mass (Mini) from 6.0M⊙ to 11.0M⊙ are evolved from pre main-sequence to the end of nuclear burning using the open-source toolkit, Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA). For stars between 7.0M⊙ <= Mini <= 9.0M⊙, energy losses at the center of the core due to neutrino cooling causes a temperature inversion resulting in off-center ignition. First ignition occurs where the minimum temperature of 7 .108 K, and a density (ρcrit) of 2 .106 g/cm3 is met. We conclude that for stars within this range, the location of first ignition decreases as a function of initial mass. Moreover, we show that there exist a unique ignition density of 2 .106 g/cm3.
- Publication:
-
APS March Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- March 2015
- Bibcode:
- 2015APS..MAR.V1288F