Progress and Application of The Initial-Final Mass Relation

The stellar life cycle is dominated by phases such as the hydrogen-burning stage and the remnant white dwarf cooling phase. However, between these two stages, stars dramatically transform themselves by losing the bulk of their mass. Planetary nebulae (PNe) provide a powerful clue to the processes involved in this transformation, but they are very complex. Over the past 15 years, a new wave of imaging and spectroscopy programs have uncovered the remnants of PNe, white dwarfs, in a wide range of well-measured environments. With this we can map the masses and temperatures of the stellar remnants to the properties of their progenitors. This work has now led to the first uniform mapping of the initial-final mass relation from 1.5 to 7 M⊙. The resulting relation is a fundamental input to our understanding of stellar evolution for low and intermediate-mass stars that produce PNe and has a wide range of applications.