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Supernovae from Massive Stars

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Handbook of Supernovae
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Abstract

Massive stars, by which we mean those stars exploding as core collapse supernovae, play a pivotal role in the evolution of the Universe. Therefore, the understanding of their evolution and explosion is fundamental in many branches of physics and astrophysics, among which, galaxy evolution, nucleosynthesis, supernovae, neutron stars and pulsars, black holes, neutrinos, and gravitational waves. In this chapter, the author presents an overview of the presupernova evolution of stars in the range between 13 and 120 M, with initial metallicities between [Fe/H] = − 3 and [Fe/H] = 0 and initial rotation velocities v = 0, 150, 300 km∕s. Emphasis is placed upon those evolutionary properties that determine the final fate of the star with special attention to the interplay among mass loss, mixing, and rotation. A general picture of the evolution and outcome of a generation of massive stars, as a function of the initial mass, metallicity, and rotation velocity, is finally outlined.

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Acknowledgements

I am indebted to my friend and collaborator Alessandro Chieffi for enlightening discussions about several aspects of the presupernova evolution and final fate of massive stars and for many valuable suggestions. I also warmly thank my wife, Tatiana, for her continuous support and encouragement during the preparation and writing of this chapter. Finally, I am grateful to my colleague and friend Prof. Ken’ichi Nomoto for having invited me to write this chapter and for having improved the quality of the paper thanks to his revision.

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Correspondence to Marco Limongi .

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Limongi, M. (2017). Supernovae from Massive Stars. In: Alsabti, A., Murdin, P. (eds) Handbook of Supernovae. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20794-0_119-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20794-0_119-1

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