Recent studies on direct imaging of Type II core-collapse supernova progenitors indicate a possible threshold around M _ { ZAMS } \sim 16 - 20 \mathrm { M } _ { \odot } , where red supergiants with larger birth masses do not appear to result in supernova explosions and instead implode directly into a black hole .
In this study we argue that it is not a coincidence that this threshold closely matches the critical transition of central Carbon burning in massive stars from the convective to radiative regime .
In lighter stars , Carbon burns convectively in the center and result in compact final presupernova cores that are likely to result in explosions , while in heavier stars after the transition , it burns as a radiative flame and the stellar cores become significantly harder to explode .
Using the KEPLER code we demonstrate the sensitivity of this transition to the rate of ^ { 12 } C ( \alpha, \gamma ) ^ { 16 } O reaction and the overshoot mixing efficiency , and we argue that the upper mass limit of exploding red supergiants could be employed to constrain uncertain input physics of massive stellar evolution calculations .
The initial mass corresponding to the central Carbon burning transition range from 14 to 26 \mathrm { M } _ { \odot } in recently published models from various groups and codes , and only a few are in agreement with the estimates inferred from direct imaging studies .