LAM seminar

Speaker: Dr. Fabrice Martins (Université de Montpellier)

Title: Very massive stars in the local Universe, and beyond

Abstract:

Massive stars play a major role in various fields of astrophysics
because of their rich nucleosynthesis, their powerful stellar winds,
their ionizing fluxes and their explosive final evolution
(core-collapse supernovae, gamma-ray bursts). They sometimes leave
behind them binary compact objects that may merge and release
gravitational waves. Among massive stars, those with masses in excess
of 100 Msun are known as “very massive stars”. Although they are rare
objects, their specific properties make them outshine all other
stellar components in young stellar populations.

In this talk, I will describe an ongoing project aiming at searching
and characterizing very massive stars in the local Universe. I will
describe their nature and properties, and I will show that they need
to be properly incorporated in population synthetis models aiming at
studying young stellar populations. I will show that such stars are
likely detected not only locally, but also in young massive clusters
at redshift 2.