Modern Red Supergiant Mass-Loss Rates and Their Impact on Massive Binary Stellar Evolution

Learn about modern red supergiant mass-loss rates and their effects on massive binary stellar evolution in this 22-minute lecture from Swinburne University's Simon Stevenson. Explore how stellar winds cause massive stars to lose significant portions of their initial mass during the red supergiant phase, and understand the implications for predicting populations of massive stars, stripped envelope supernovae, and merging double compact object binaries detected by LIGO and Virgo. Examine compiled modern mass-loss prescriptions based on red supergiant observations from nearby galaxies (SMC, LMC, M31) and their implementation in the COMPAS binary population synthesis code. Discover how these updated rates influence massive binary evolution, the red supergiant problem, and the formation of Galactic black holes like Cyg X-1, while investigating their impact on merging binary systems including black holes, neutron stars, and neutron star-black hole pairs.