How Stars End Their Lives: From White Dwarfs to Supernovae

Learn about stellar evolution and death in this comprehensive physics lecture that explores the complex mechanisms governing how stars end their lives. Delve into key principles of stellar structure and evolution, examining both low/intermediate-mass stars like our Sun and massive stars. Discover recent theoretical advances showing how all stars become dynamically unstable as giant stars, leading to mass ejections. Explore numerical simulations demonstrating how low/intermediate-mass stars can lose their entire envelopes to become white dwarfs, while massive stars undergo core collapse to form neutron stars or black holes. Understand the latest breakthroughs in core-collapse processes and how they connect late stellar evolution to supernova explosions and final remnants. Examine how modern gravitational-wave detectors like LIGO help verify theoretical models through observational evidence. Topics covered include superwinds, supernovae, neutrinos, nebulae, iron cores, evolutionary paths, energy balance, common envelope systems, thermal pulses, collapse mechanisms, compactness parameters, and the effects of rotation and mass loss on stellar death.