The Evolution of Carbon Burning Flames Inside Super-Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars

We explore how carbon burning impacts the bifurcation region separating stars whose final fate is a massive white dwarf from stars whose final fate is a massive star supernova. A dense grid of models with initial mass ($M_{ini}$) from 6.0$M_{\odot}$ to 11.0$M_{\odot}$ are evolved from pre main-sequence to the end of nuclear burning using the open-source toolkit, Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA). For stars between 7.0$M_{\odot}$ $\le$ $M_{ini}$ $\leq$ 9.0$M_{\odot}$, energy losses at the center of the core due to neutrino cooling causes a temperature inversion resulting in off-center ignition. First ignition occurs where the minimum temperature of 7$\cdot$10$^{8}$ K, and a density ($\rho_{crit}$) of 2$\cdot$10$^{6}$ g/cm$^3$ is met. We conclude that for stars within this range, the location of first ignition decreases as a function of initial mass. Moreover, we show that there exist a unique ignition density of 2$\cdot$10$^{6}$ g/cm$^3$.