X-ray emission lines from inhomogeneous stellar winds

DOI10.1051/0004-6361:20047187zbMATH Open1070.85002arXivastro-ph/0403707OpenAlexW3104840299WikidataQ68543015 ScholiaQ68543015MaRDI QIDQ4668271FDOQ4668271

Authors: L. M. Oskinova, Achim Feldmeier, W.-R. Hamann 

Publication date: 18 April 2005

Published in: Astronomy & Astrophysics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: It is commonly adopted that X-rays from O stars are produced deep inside the stellar wind, and transported outwards through the bulk of the expanding matter which attenuates the radiation and affects the shape of emission line profiles. None of the existing models was able to fit the observationed lines consistently. The possible caveat of these models was the assumption of a smooth stellar wind. Motivated by the various evidences that the stellar winds are in fact structured, we present a 2-D numerical model of a stochastic, inhomogeneous wind. Small parcels of hot, X-ray emitting gas are permeated with cool, absorbing wind material which is compressed into thin shell fragments. Wind fragmentation alters the radiative transfer drastically, compared to homogeneous models of the same mass-loss rate. X-rays produced deep inside the wind, which would be totally absorbed in a homogeneous flow, can effectively escape from a fragmented wind. The wind absorption becomes wavelength independent if the individual fragments are optically thick. The X-ray line profiles are flat-topped in the blue part and decline steeply in the red part for the winds with short acceleration zone. For the winds where the acceleration extends over significant distances, the lines can appear nearly symmetric and only slightly blueshifted, in contrast to the skewed, triangular line profiles typically obtained from homogeneous wind models of high optical depth. We show that profiles from a fragmented wind model can reproduce the observed line profiles from zeta Orionis.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0403707

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zbMATH Keywords

X-raystarstellar windinhomogeneous hydrodynamics

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Radiative transfer in astronomy and astrophysics (85A25) Observational and experimental questions in relativity and gravitational theory (83B05)

Cited In (2)

• Spectroscopy of massive stars
• Mass loss from inhomogeneous hot star winds - I. Resonance line formation in 2D models

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