[Mesa-users] CCSN test suite halts early for stripped star

[Jared Goldberg (Guest Researcher)]

The simplest solution would probably be to skip inlist_shock_part3 and
inlist_shock_part4 entirely, and jump straight to shock_part5 which has an
exterior mass cutoff rather than a cutoff related to a core boundary (e.g.
when do you hit the H-rich envelope? which is effectively what's encoded in
shock_part3). Note that you will want to a much smaller overhead mass
coordinate in shock_part5 (x_ctrl(16) = probably something more like 1d-4).

In fact, if you really want to use the ccsn_IIp setup, you may be able to
get away with simply telling MESA in part1 that it is actually part 5 so
that it uses the part5 stopping condition, by setting
x_integer_ctrl(1) = 5 ! 1 ! part number
though it may take some babysitting and further troubleshooting...

Best,
~Jared

On Tue, Apr 14, 2026 at 12:02 PM Mandal, Soham (uqa7ur) via Mesa-users <
mesa-users at lists.mesastar.org> wrote:

> Dear MESA users,
>
> I have been trying to model the evolution of a stripped star (mass at core
> collapse = 6.03*Msun, hydrogen mass<1e-7*Msun) from core collapse to shock
> breakout using the ccsn_IIp test suite as a template. The run terminates
> early (at shock_part3), citing 'start_m>stop_m'.
>
> I presume that this happens because the ccsn_IIp test suite was designed
> to have the shock run through mass coordinates that are out of bounds for
> my stripped star model. The shock after part 3 reaches 5.91Msun, which is
> quite close to the star's boundary. There are two questions I am struggling
> with. (1) Is there a way to modify this run so that inlist_shock_part4,
> inlist_shock_part5, and inlist_stella may be executed, generating the
> mesa.hyd and mesa.abn files (inputs to STELLA)? (2) Are there any standard
> recommendations for preparing the inputs to STELLA for exploding a stripped
> star (e.g., increasing boxcar pass iteration to 20, as recommended by
> Paxton et al. 2018)?
>
> I would greatly appreciate any thoughts or help regarding the issue I'm
> facing here. I attach the density vs mass coordinate plots of the stripped
> star as the shock progresses through it. I have also attached the inlists I
> used for this problem, along with the terminal output generated. Thanks a
> lot for your consideration!
>
> Best,
> Dr. Soham Mandal
> VITA postdoctoral research fellow
> Department of Astronomy
> University of Virginia
> _______________________________________________
> mesa-users at lists.mesastar.org
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