Convective boundary mixing in a post-He core burning massive star model

TL;DR

This study investigates how convective boundary mixing affects the evolution, core structure, and nucleosynthesis of a 25 solar mass star during post-He core burning, revealing significant impacts on supernova progenitors.

Contribution

It systematically models CBM effects using the MESA code with varying parameters, highlighting their influence on core masses, compactness, and nucleosynthetic yields in massive star evolution.

Findings

Core mass ranges vary significantly with CBM parameter values.

Core compactness at pre-supernova stage is sensitive to CBM assumptions.

Nucleosynthetic yields of key elements are non-linearly affected by CBM.

Abstract

Convective boundary mixing (CBM) in the advanced evolutionary stages of massive stars is not well understood. Structural changes caused by convection have an impact on the evolution as well as the subsequent supernova, or lack thereof. The effects of convectively driven mixing across convective boundaries during the post He core burning evolution of $25\mathrm{M}_{\odot}$, solar-metallicity, non-rotating stellar models is studied using the MESA stellar evolution code. CBM is modelled using the exponentially decaying diffusion coefficient equation, the free parameter of which, $f_{\mathrm{cbm}}$, is varied systematically throughout the course of the stellar model's evolution with values of $(0.002, 0.012, 0.022, 0.032)$. The effect of varying this parameter produces mass ranges at collapse in the ONe, Si, Fe cores of $(1.82\mathrm{M}_{\odot}, 4.36\mathrm{M}_{\odot})$, $(1.67\mathrm{M}_{\odot}, 1.99\mathrm{M}_{\odot})$ and $(1.46\mathrm{M}_{\odot}, 1.70\mathrm{M}_{\odot})$ respectively, with percent differences from the model with minimal CBM as large as 86.3%. At the presupernova stage, the compactness of the stellar cores from O'Connor & Ott (2011), $\xi_M$, exhibit a range of $(0.120, 0.354)$, suggesting that the extent of CBM in the advanced burning stages of massive stars is an important consideration for the explodability and type of compact remnant. The nucleosynthetic yields from the models, most notably C, O, Ne, Mg and Si are also significantly affected by the CBM assumptions, showing non-linear trends with increased mixing. The simulations show that interactions between convective C, Ne and O shells produce significant non-linear changes in the evolution, whereas from the end of Si burning, the structural changes attributed to the CBM are dominated by the growth of the convective C shell. Progenitor structures for all the models are available from HERE (link and DOI to appear).