Bonn Optimized Stellar Tracks (BoOST)

Simulated populations of massive and very massive stars for astrophysical applications^⋆

¹ Institute of Astronomy, Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Informatics, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Grudzidzka 5, 87-100 Toruń, Poland
e-mail: dorottya.szecsi@gmail.com
² I. Physikalisches Institut, Universität zu Köln, Zülpicher-Strasse 77, 50937 Cologne, Germany
³ Center for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Victoria 3122, Australia
⁴ OzGrav: The ARC Center of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery, Hawthorn, Australia
⁵ McWilliams Center for Cosmology, Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
⁶ Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Boční II 1401, 141 00 Prague 4, Czech Republic
⁷ Argelander-Institut für Astronomie der Universität Bonn, Auf dem Hügel 71, 53121 Bonn, Germany

Received: 14 June 2021
Accepted: 7 December 2021

Abstract

Massive and very massive stars can play important roles in stellar populations by ejecting strong stellar winds and exploding in energetic phenomena. It is therefore imperative that their behavior be properly accounted for in synthetic model populations. We present nine grids of stellar evolutionary model sequences, together with finely resolved interpolated sequences and synthetic populations, of stars with 9–500 M_⊙ and with metallicities ranging from Galactic metallicity down to 1/250 Z_⊙. The stellar models were computed with the Bonn evolutionary code with consistent physical ingredients, and covering core hydrogen- and core helium-burning phases. The interpolation and population synthesis were performed with our newly developed routine SYNSTARS. Eight of the grids represent slowly rotating massive stars with a normal or classical evolutionary path, while one grid represents fast-rotating, chemically homogeneously evolving models. The grids contain data on stellar wind properties such as estimated wind velocity and kinetic energy of the wind, as well as common stellar parameters such as mass, radius, surface temperature, luminosity, mass-loss rate, and surface abundances of 34 isotopes. We also provide estimates of the helium and carbon-oxygen core mass for calculating the mass of stellar remnants. The Bonn Optimized Stellar Tracks (BoOST) project is published as simple tables that include stellar models, interpolated tracks, and synthetic populations. Covering the broadest mass and metallicity range of any published massive star evolutionary model sets to date, BoOST is ideal for further scientific applications such as star formation studies in both low- and high-redshift galaxies.