Related papers: Magnetically Confined Wind Shocks in X-rays - a Re…
Young pulsars spin incredibly quickly, but are also slowing down at a very rapid rate. This process carries away enormous amounts of energy from the star in the form of a relativistic wind. Through the high resolution now offered by the…
XMM-Newton has deeply changed our picture of X-ray emission of hot, massive stars. High-resolution X-ray spectroscopy as well as monitoring of these objects helped us gain a deeper insight into the physics of single massive stars with or…
Neutron stars are among the most fascinating astrophysical sources, being characterized by strong gravity, densities about the nuclear one or even above, and huge magnetic fields. Their observational signatures can be extremely diverse…
Shock waves constitute discontinuities in matter which are relevant in studying the plasma behaviour in astrophysical scenarios and in heavy-ion collision. They can produce conical emission in relativistic collisions and are also thought to…
Massive stars have strong stellar winds that direct their evolution through the upper Hertzsprung-Russell diagram and determine the black hole mass function. Secondly, wind strength dictates the atmospheric structure that sets the ionising…
We examine the angular momentum loss and associated rotational spin-down for magnetic hot stars with a line-driven stellar wind and a rotation-aligned dipole magnetic field. Our analysis here is based on our previous 2-D numerical MHD…
It is well known that clusters of massive stars are influenced by the presence of strong winds, that they are sources of diffuse X-rays from shocked gas, and that this gas can be vented into the surrounding region or the halo through the…
Recent spectropolarimetric surveys (MiMeS, BOB) have revealed that approximately 7% of massive stars host stable, surface dipolar magnetic fields with strengths on the order of kG. These fields channel the dense radiatively driven stellar…
Stellar winds of cool, main-sequence stars are very tenuous and difficult to observe. Despite carrying away only a small amount of the stellar mass, they are important for regulating the rotation of the star and, consequently, its activity…
M dwarf stars are currently the main targets in searches for potentially habitable planets. However, their winds have been suggested to be harmful to planetary atmospheres. Here, in order to better understand the winds of M dwarfs and also…
Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars are evolved massive stars with strong fast stellar winds. WR stars in our Galaxy have shown three possible sources of X-ray emission associated with their winds: shocks in the winds, colliding stellar winds, and…
We begin by reviewing the theory of thermal, neutrino-driven proto-neutron star (PNS) winds. Including the effects of magnetic fields and rotation, we then derive the mass and energy loss from magnetically-driven PNS winds for both…
The breakout of a fast ($>0.1 c$), yet sub-relativistic shock from a thick stellar wind is expected to produce a pulse of X-rays with a rise time of seconds to hours. Here, we construct a semi-analytic model for the breakout of a…
Dust waves and bow waves result from the action of a star's radiation pressure on a stream of dusty plasma that flows past it. They are an alternative mechanism to hydrodynamic bow shocks for explaining the curved arcs of infrared emission…
The Of?p star CPD -28 2561 was monitored at high energies with XMM-Newton and HST. In X-rays, this magnetic oblique rotator displays bright and hard emission that varies by ~55% with rotational phase. These changes occur in phase with…
The Galactic population of rotation-powered (aka radio) millisecond pulsars (MSPs) exhibits diverse X-ray properties. Energetic MSPs show pulsed non-thermal radiation from their magnetospheres. Eclipsing binary MSPs predominantly have X-ray…
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. The…
We observed NGC 1624-2, the O-type star with the largest known magnetic field Bp~20 kG), in X-rays with the ACIS-S camera onboard the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Our two observations were obtained at the minimum and maximum of the periodic…
Our knowledge of the presence and the strength of magnetic fields in massive O and B-type stars remains very poor. Recent observations indicate that the presence of magnetic fields is responsible for a wide range of phenomena observed in…
The clumping of massive star winds is an established paradigm, which is confirmed by multiple lines of evidence and is supported by stellar wind theory. We use the results from time-dependent hydrodynamical models of the instability in the…