Massive stars: their contribution to energy and element budget in chemo-dynamical galaxy evolution

TL;DR

This paper presents radiation hydrodynamical simulations to evaluate how massive stars influence the energy and element distribution in galaxy evolution, highlighting lower-than-expected energy transfer efficiencies and element release during Wolf-Rayet phases.

Contribution

It provides new numerical insights into the energetic impact of massive stars on the interstellar medium and their element release, informing galaxy evolution models.

Findings

Energy transfer efficiencies are smaller than analytical estimates.

Massive stars significantly contribute to element enrichment during Wolf-Rayet phases.

Simulation results can refine parameters in chemo-dynamical galaxy evolution models.

Abstract

Here results of numerical radiation hydrodynamical simulations are presented which explore the energetic impact of massive stars on the interstellar medium. We study the evolution of the ambient gas around isolated massive stars in the mass range between 15 and 85 Msun in order to analyze the formation of structures and further the transfer and deposit of the stellar wind and radiation energy into the circumstellar medium until the stars explode as a supernovae. The derived energy transfer efficiencies are much smaller than analytically estimated and should be inserted into chemo-dynamical evolutionary models of galaxies as appropriate parameter values. As an additional issue the element release in the Wolf-Rayet phases and its detectability have been investigated for comparison with observations.