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We present a new empirical prescription for the mass-loss rates of carbon- and oxygen-sequence Wolf–Rayet stars as a function of their luminosity, surface chemical composition, and initial metallicity. The new prescription is based on results of detailed spectral analyses of WC and WO stars and improves the often applied Nugis and Lamers relation. We find that the mass-loss rates of WC and WO stars (with X = 0 and Y ≲ 0.98) can be expressed as (L/L⊙) + 0.44 log Y + 0.25 log (ZFe/ZFe,⊙). This relation is based on mass-loss determinations that assume a volume-filling factor of 0.1, but the prescription can easily be scaled to account for other volume-filling factors. The residual of the fit is σ = 0.06 dex. We investigated whether the relation can also describe the mass loss of hydrogen-free WN stars and showed that it can when an adjustment of the metallicity dependence () is applied. Compared to that of Nugis and Lamers, is less sensitive to the luminosity and the surface abundance, implying a stronger mass loss of massive stars in their late stages of evolution. The modest metallicity dependence implies that if WC or WO stars are formed in metal-deficient environments, their mass-loss rates are higher than currently anticipated. These effects may result in the formation of a larger number of SNe Ic and fewer black holes and may favor the production of superluminous SNe Ic through interaction with C- and O-rich circumstellar material or dense stellar wind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contact phase expected to precede the coalescence of two massive stars is poorly characterized due to the paucity of observational constraints. Here we report on the discovery of VFTS 352, an O-type binary in the 30 Doradus region, as the most massive and earliest spectral type overcontact system known to date. We derived the 3D geometry of the system, its orbital period day, components’ effective temperatures—T1 = 42 540 ± 280 K and T2 = 41 120 ± 290 K—and dynamical masses— and Compared to single-star evolutionary models, the VFTS 352 components are too hot for their dynamical masses by about 2700 and 1100 K, respectively. These results can be explained naturally as a result of enhanced mixing, theoretically predicted to occur in very short-period tidally locked systems. The VFTS 352 components are two of the best candidates identified so far to undergo this so-called chemically homogeneous evolution. The future of VFTS 352 is uncertain. If the two stars merge, a very rapidly rotating star will be produced. Instead, if the stars continue to evolve homogeneously and keep shrinking within their Roche Lobes, coalescence can be avoided. In this case, tides may counteract the spin down by winds such that the VFTS 352 components may, at the end of their life, fulfill the requirements for long gamma-ray burst (GRB) progenitors in the collapsar scenario. Independently of whether the VFTS 352 components become GRB progenitors, this scenario makes VFTS 352 interesting as a progenitor of a black hole binary, hence as a potential gravitational wave source through black hole–black hole merger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]