The effect of massive binaries on stellar populations and supernova progenitors

Understand

We compare our latest single and binary stellar model results from the Cambridge STARS code to several sets of observations.

• We examine four stellar population ratios, the number of blue to red supergiants, the number of Wolf-Rayet stars to O supergiants, the number of red supergiants to Wolf-Rayet stars and the relative number of Wolf-Rayet subtypes, WC to WN stars.
• These four ratios provide a quantitative measure of nuclear burning lifetimes and the importance of mass loss during various stages of the stars' lifetimes.
• In addition we compare our models to the relative rate of type Ib/c to type II supernovae to measure the amount of mass lost over the entire lives of all stars.