The Initial-Final Mass Relation of White Dwarfs: Insights from PARSEC and COLIBRI TP-AGB models

The Initial-Final Mass Relation (IFMR) plays a crucial role in understanding the structure and evolution of stars, by linking the star’s initial mass to the mass of its remnant. In this thesis we explore the Initial-Final Mass Relation of White Dwarfs from a theorist perspective, using full PARSEC evolutionary tracks and completing the ejection of the envelope with COLIBRI computations. The journey starts with a detailed review of the PARSEC code, the fundamental equations, and input physics involved in modeling the Thermally-Pulsing Asymptotic Giant Branch phase. With this knowledge at hand, I will present new opacity tables and new numerical methods to accelerate and terminate the AGB evolution. Finally, with all the tools ready, we aim to reproduce the recently observed non-monotonic behavior in the IFMR. The presence of a kink at 𝑀ini ∼ 1.65 − 2.10 M⊙ is interpreted as the interaction between recurrent dredge-up events and strong episodes of mass loss. To model the anticipated IFMR, I investigate the role of the efficiency convective overshooting applied at the border of the convective envelope and pulse-driven convective zone (PDCZ). By comparing our stellar models with observational data, I find that no fixed couple of overshooting parameters can explain the kink. Instead, the results suggest an increasing envelope overshooting as the initial mass of the star increases.