[Mesa-users] Advice on wind prescriptions for very massive stars

[Jared Goldberg]

Hi Natalija,

"What winds should we use in Very Massive Stars" is indeed a hot area of
debate. You correctly identify some limitations of many of the standard
implementations that are pre-packaged in MESA. There is not one "preferred"
method implemented in MESA. For example, the most modern is the "Bjorklund"
option (see also Bjorklund+23
<https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2023A%26A...676A.109B/abstract> and
continued work by that group), but it does not contain a bi-stability jump
that some contest exists and matters. As such, different groups have
different preferred implementations for VMS winds, some of which can be
found in the MESA Zenodo community
<https://zenodo.org/communities/mesa/records>. Of course this choice
impacts the predicted yields, evolution, and outcomes (see e.g. recent work
<https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025A%26A...699A..71H/abstract> by Erin
Higgins+Armagh-and-friends, and a nice discussion in S2.6 of Keszthelyi+25
<https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025A%26A...700A.186K/abstract>). In
general, the MESA manifesto requests that new routines and reproducibility
packages be uploaded to Zenodo or otherwise made
public/open-source/open-science, and in the absence of public availability
through e.g. Zenodo, authors of relevant papers ought to be willing to
share their preferred setups in private communication.

Re your specific question about Eddington effects: in general, often (but
not always), empirically-calibrated mass loss prescriptions implicitly or
explicitly include some Eddington effects when they're calibrated in the
luminous regime. So whether to use an additional super-eddington correction
depends on the underlying mass loss model.

Cheers,
~Jared

On Wed, Jul 22, 2026 at 8:43 AM Natalija M via Mesa-users <
mesa-users at lists.mesastar.org> wrote:

> Dear MESA users,
>
> I am modeling the evolution of rotating very massive stars (100–500 Msun)
> with MESA v26.4.1. The current models have been computed at solar
> metallicity, with the goal of extending the study to other metallicities as
> well, and I would appreciate some advice regarding the most appropriate
> wind prescriptions.
>
> The models were initially computed using the standard Dutch wind scheme.
> In these models, the Nugis & Lamers prescription becomes active already
> during core hydrogen burning, so the stars enter a WR/WNh-like wind regime
> while still on the main sequence. Since these stars evolve close to the
> Eddington limit and the Dutch scheme was not specifically developed for
> very massive stars in this regime, I would like to know whether another
> treatment is recommended.
>
> I reviewed the available MESA options and recent literature. Grafener &
> Hamann (2008) is intended for WR/WNh stars with optically thick winds,
> while Bjorklund et al. (2022) provides a modern alternative to Vink et al.
> (2001) for hot O-star winds. MESA also includes the optional
> super_eddington_wind treatment, which introduces an additional
> parametrized mass-loss contribution for super-Eddington models. However, I
> am not sure whether this approach is commonly adopted for very massive star
> evolution or whether it is mainly intended as a simplified treatment of
> super-Eddington phases.
>
> I would like to ask which wind prescription, or combination of
> prescriptions, available in MESA is considered appropriate for modeling
> stars in this mass range, or whether implementing a dedicated VMS
> prescription would be recommended. I would also appreciate any advice
> regarding the treatment of the LBV phase in very massive stars. Is there a
> preferred wind prescription or approach for this evolutionary phase?
>
> Any suggestions or references would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very
> much for your time!
>
> Best regards,
>
> Natalija Mladenović
> Astronomical Observatory Belgrade
> _______________________________________________
> mesa-users at lists.mesastar.org
> https://lists.mesastar.org/mailman/listinfo/mesa-users
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.mesastar.org/pipermail/mesa-users/attachments/20260722/5ed38dbb/attachment.htm>