The stellar mass range 8 M/M 12 corresponds to the most massive asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars and the most numerous massive stars. It is host to a variety of supernova (SN) progenitors and is therefore very important for galactic chemical evolution and stellar population studies. In this paper, we study the transition from super-AGB (SAGB) star to massive star and find that a propagating neon-oxygen-burning shell is common to both the most massive electron capture supernova (EC-SN) progenitors and the lowest mass iron-core-collapse supernova (FeCCSN) progenitors. Of the models that ignite neon-burning off-center, the 9.5 M star would evolve to an FeCCSN after the neon-burning shell propagates to the center, as in previous studies. The neon-burning shell in the 8.8 M model, however, fails to reach the center as the URCA process and an extended (0.6 M ) region of low Y e (0.48) in the outer part of the core begin to dominate the late evolution; the model evolves to an EC-SN. This is the first study to follow the most massive EC-SN progenitors to collapse, representing an evolutionary path to EC-SN in addition to that from SAGB stars undergoing thermal pulses (TPs). We also present models of an 8.75 M SAGB star through its entire TP phase until electron captures on 20 Ne begin at its center and of a 12 M star up to the iron core collapse. We discuss key uncertainties and how the different pathways to collapse affect the pre-SN structure. Finally, we compare our results to the observed neutron star mass distribution.
We investigate the evolution of super-AGB thermal pulse (TP) stars for a range of metallicities (Z) and explore the effect of convective boundary mixing (CBM). With decreasing metallicity and evolution along the TP phase, the He-shell flash and the third dredge-up (TDU) occur closer together in time. After some time (depending upon the CBM parameterisation), efficient TDU begins while the pulse-driven convection zone (PDCZ) is still present, causing a convective exchange of material between the PDCZ and the convective envelope. This results in the ingestion of protons into the convective He-burning pulse. Even small amounts of CBM encourage the interaction of the convection zones leading to transport of protons from the convective envelope into the He layer. H-burning luminosities exceed 10 9 (in some cases 10 10 ) L . We also calculate models of dredge-out in the most massive super-AGB stars and show that the dredge-out phenomenon is another likely site of convective-reactive H-12 C combustion. We discuss the substantial uncertainties of stellar evolution models under these conditions. Nevertheless, the simulations suggest that in the convective-reactive H-combustion regime of H-ingestion the star may encounter conditions for the intermediate neutron capture process (i process). We speculate that some CEMP-s/r stars could originate in i-process conditions in the H-ingestion phases of low-Z SAGB stars. This scenario would however suggest a very low electron-capture supernova rate from super-AGB stars. We also simulate potential outbursts triggered by such H-ingestion events, present their light curves and briefly discuss their transient properties.
Carbon-rich grains are observed to condense in the ejecta of recent core-collapse supernovae, within a year after the explosion. Silicon carbide grains of type X are C-rich grains with isotpic signatures of explosive supernova nucleosynthesis have been found in primitive meteorites. Much rarer silicon carbide grains of type C are a special sub-group of SiC grains from supernovae. They show peculiar abundance signatures for Si and S, isotopically heavy Si and isotopically light S, which appear to to be in disagreement with model predictions. We propose that C grains are formed mostly from C-rich stellar material exposed to lower SN shock temperatures than the more common type X grains. In this scenario, extreme 32 S enrichments observed in C grains may be explained by the presence of short-lived 32 Si (τ 1/2 = 153 years) in the ejecta, produced by neutron capture processes starting from the stable Si isotopes. No
We develop an energy functional with shell-model occupations as the relevant degrees of freedom and compute nuclear masses across the nuclear chart. The functional is based on Hohenberg-Kohn theory with phenomenologically motivated terms. A global fit of the 17-parameter functional to 2049 nuclear masses yields a root-mean-square deviation of χ = 1.31 MeV. Nuclear radii are computed within a model that employs the resulting occupation numbers.
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