Thursday

Stars more massive than about 8 Msun end their lives as a supernova (SN), an event of fundamental importance Universe-wide. The physical properties of massive stars before the SN event is very uncertain, both from theoretical and observational perspectives. In this talk, I will review recent efforts to couple stellar evolution and atmosphere modeling of stars in the pre-SN stage. These models are able to predict the high-resolution spectrum and broadband photometry, which can then be directly compared to the observations of core-collapse SN progenitors. I will discuss the surprising predictions of spectral types of massive stars before death. Depending on the initial mass and rotation, single star models indicate that massive stars die as red supergiants, yellow hypergiants, luminous blue variables, and Wolf-Rayet stars of the WN and WO subtypes. The presence of a close companion profoundly affects the fate of massive stars, and I will review the latest predictions of SN progenitors based on binary star evolution. I will finish by assessing the detectability of the different types of SN progenitors.