A Grid of Core-collapse Supernova Remnant Models. I. The Effect of Wind-driven Mass Loss

Abstract

Massive stars can shed material via steady, line-driven winds, eruptive outflows, or mass transfer onto a binary companion. In the case of single stars, the mass is deposited by the stellar wind into the nearby environment. After the massive star explodes, the stellar ejecta interact with this circumstellar material (CSM), oftentimes resulting in bright X-ray line emission from both the shock-heated CSM and ejecta. The amount of material lost by the progenitor, the mass of ejecta, and its energetics all impact the bulk spectral characteristics of this X-ray emission. Here we present a grid of core-collapse supernova remnant models derived from models for massive stars with zero-age main-sequence masses of ∼10–30 M☉ evolved from the pre-main-sequence stage with wind-driven mass loss. Evolution is handled by a multistage pipeline of software packages. First, we use mesa (Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics) to evolve the progenitors from pre-main-sequence to iron core collapse. We then use the Supernova Explosion Code (snec) to explode the mesa models, and we follow them for the first 100 days following core collapse. Finally, we couple the snec output, along with the CSM generated from mesa mass-loss rates, into the cosmic-ray hydrodynamics code to model the remnant phase to 7000 yr after core collapse. At the end of each stage, we compare our outputs with those found in the literature, and we examine any qualitative and quantitative differences in the bulk properties of the remnants and their spectra based on the initial progenitor mass, as well as mass-loss history.