Nucleosynthetic Constraints on the Mass of the Heaviest Supernovae

Understand

Assuming a Salpeter initial mass function and taking the solar abundances as a representative sample, we explore the sensitivity of nucleosynthesis in massive stars to the truncation of supernova explosions above a certain mass.

• It is assumed that stars of all masses contribute to nucleosynthesis by their pre-explosive winds, but above a certain limiting main sequence mass, the presupernova star becomes a black hole and ejects nothing more.
• The solar abundances from oxygen to atomic mass 90 are fit quite well assuming no cut-off at all, i.e., by assuming all stars up to 120 solar masses make successful supernovae.
• Little degradation in the fit occurs if the upper limit is reduced to 25 solar masses.