CLOSE BINARY STELLAR EVOLUTION AND SUPERNOVAE

BENVENUTO; BERSTEN MELINA

Handbook of Supernovae

Springer

Año: 2017;

Type II, IIb, Ib and Ic supernovae are widely considered as the end ofthe evolution of massive stars. These are thought as due to a unique mechanism:core collapse and subsequent explosion. However, from a photometrical and spectroscopicalpoint of view these events are very different. Type II events are plentyof hydrogen, IIb have little, whereas Ib do not show it but are dominated by helium.Even more extreme is the case of Ic events that do not show any hydrogen or helium.Today it is considered that most of massive stars belong to binary systems closeenough to make the components of the pair to be forced to undergo mass exchangeduring their lives. Evidently, the evolution of massive binaries is fundamental forinterpreting available observations quantitatively. Here we review the theory of theevolution of massive binaries playing special attention to its physical basis and maindifferences from the far easier problem of single stellar evolution. Then, we discussits application to the case of some recent supernovae thought to be due to binaryprogenitors: SN 1993J and SN 2011dh. With the presently available models it ispossible to account for the variety of type II, IIb and even Ib supernovae as due tomass transfer and/or loss from the systems. However it seems difficult to explain theprocesses that lead type Ic progenitors to lose all their helium prior to explosion.