Evolution of Massive Stars With Pulsation-Driven Superwinds During the Red Supergiant Phase

Pulsations driven by partial ionization of hydrogen in the envelope are often considered important for driving winds from red supergiants (RSGs). In particular, it has been suggested by some authors that the pulsation growth rate in an RSG can be high enough to trigger an unusually strong wind (or a superwind), when the luminosity-to-mass ratio becomes sufficiently large. Using both hydrostatic and hydrodynamic stellar evolution models with initial masses ranging from 15 to 40M , we investigate (1) how the pulsation growth rate depends on the global parameters of supergiant stars and (2) what would be the consequences of a pulsation-driven superwind, if it occurred, for the late stages of massive star evolution.We suggest that such a superwind history would be marked by a runaway increase, followed by a sudden decrease, of the wind’s mass-loss rate. The impact on the late evolution of massive stars would be substantial, with stars losing a huge fraction of their H-envelope even with a significantly lower initial mass than previously predicted. This might explain the observed lack of Type II-P supernova (SN) progenitors having initial mass higher than about 17M . We also discuss possible implications for a subset of Type IIn SNe.