Black Holes at high and low metallicity
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866915589600051200 |
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| author | Vink, Jorick S. Sabhahit, Gautham N. Winch, Ethan R. J. |
| author_facet | Vink, Jorick S. Sabhahit, Gautham N. Winch, Ethan R. J. |
| contents | At the end of their lives the most massive stars collapse into black holes (BHs). The detection of an 85 $M_{\odot}$ BH from GW 190521 appeared to challenge the upper-mass limit imposed by pair-instability (PI). Using systematic MESA calculations with new mass-loss implementations, we show that 100 $M_{\odot}$ stars at metallicities below 0.1 $Z_{\odot}$ can evolve into blue supergiant progenitors with cores small enough to avoid PI, yet with limited envelope loss, yielding remnants within the second mass gap. The key ingredients involve (i) a proper consideration of internal mixing and (ii) physically motivated stellar winds. Our modelling provides a robust pathway that roughly doubles the maximum BH mass permitted by PI theory and establish a physically-consistent framework to explore the upper BH mass limit versus metallicity. For rapid rotation ($\ge$50\% of critical), the upper BH mass comes down to $\simeq$35 $M_{\odot}$, matching the LIGO/Virgo BH mass pile-up. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_00199 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Black Holes at high and low metallicity Vink, Jorick S. Sabhahit, Gautham N. Winch, Ethan R. J. High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena Astrophysics of Galaxies Solar and Stellar Astrophysics At the end of their lives the most massive stars collapse into black holes (BHs). The detection of an 85 $M_{\odot}$ BH from GW 190521 appeared to challenge the upper-mass limit imposed by pair-instability (PI). Using systematic MESA calculations with new mass-loss implementations, we show that 100 $M_{\odot}$ stars at metallicities below 0.1 $Z_{\odot}$ can evolve into blue supergiant progenitors with cores small enough to avoid PI, yet with limited envelope loss, yielding remnants within the second mass gap. The key ingredients involve (i) a proper consideration of internal mixing and (ii) physically motivated stellar winds. Our modelling provides a robust pathway that roughly doubles the maximum BH mass permitted by PI theory and establish a physically-consistent framework to explore the upper BH mass limit versus metallicity. For rapid rotation ($\ge$50\% of critical), the upper BH mass comes down to $\simeq$35 $M_{\odot}$, matching the LIGO/Virgo BH mass pile-up. |
| title | Black Holes at high and low metallicity |
| topic | High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena Astrophysics of Galaxies Solar and Stellar Astrophysics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.00199 |