Evolution of Wolf-Rayet stars as black hole progenitors

Understand

Evolved Wolf-Rayet stars form a key aspect of massive star evolution, and their strong outflows determine their final fates.

• In this study, we calculate grids of stellar models for a wide range of initial masses at five metallicities (ranging from solar down to just 2% solar).
• We compare a recent hydrodynamically-consistent wind prescription with two earlier frequently-used wind recipes in stellar evolution and population synthesis modelling, and we present the ranges of maximum final masses at core He-exhaustion for each wind prescription and metallicity Z.
• Our model grids reveal qualitative differences in mass-loss behaviour of the wind prescriptions in terms of "convergence".