Related papers: Polarimetry as a tool to study multi-dimensional w…
Various theories have been proposed to predict how mass loss depends on the stellar rotation rate, both in terms of its strength, as well as its latitudinal dependence, crucial for our understanding of angular momentum evolution. Here we…
The topic of wind-clumping has been the subject of much activity in recent years, due to the impact that it can have on derived mass-loss rates. Here we present an alternative method of investigating wind-clumping, that of polarimetry. We…
Clumping in the winds of massive stars may significantly reduce empirical mass-loss rates, and which in turn may have a large impact on our understanding of massive star evolution. Here, we investigate wind-clumping through the linear…
Mass loss is a key process in the evolution of massive stars, and must be understood quantitatively to be successfully included in broader astrophysical applications. In this review, we discuss various aspects of radiation driven mass loss,…
Astronomical polarimetry is a powerful technique that can provide physical information sometimes difficult or impossible to obtain by any other type of observation. Almost every class of binary star can benefit from polarimetric…
Measurements of stellar mass loss rates are used to assess how wind strength varies with coronal activity and age for solar-like stars. Mass loss generally increases with activity, but we find evidence that winds suddenly weaken at a…
Polarization provides additional diagnostic opportunities for probing the structured environments of massive stars as well as the illumination of those environments by stars that are not spherical. After a brief overview of polarization…
As sources of chemical enrichment, ionizing radiation and energetic feedback, massive stars drive the ecology of their host galaxies despite their relative rarity, additionally to yielding compact remnants, which can generate gravitational…
In the final stages of stellar evolution low- to intermediate-mass stars lose their envelope in increasingly massive stellar winds. Such winds affect the interstellar medium and the galactic chemical evolution as well as the circumstellar…
Interacting binaries are of general interest as laboratories for investigating the physics of accretion, which gives rise to the bulk of high-energy radiation in the Galaxy. They allow us to probe stellar evolution processes that cannot be…
We review recent developments regarding radiation driven mass loss from OB-stars. We first summarize the fundamental theoretical predictions, and then compare these to observational results (including the VLT-FLAMES survey of massive…
Stellar winds govern the angular momentum evolution of solar-like stars throughout their main-sequence lifetime. The efficiency of this process depends on the geometry of the star's magnetic field. There has been a rapid increase recently…
We present the results of Monte Carlo mass-loss predictions for massive stars covering a wide range of stellar parameters. We critically test our predictions against a range of observed mass-loss rates -- in light of the recent discussions…
We use an analytic framework to calculate the evolution of binary orbits under a physically-motivated model that accounts for angular momentum loss associated with winds from an accretion disk around the compact objected accretor. Our…
Stellar evolution models of massive stars are very sensitive to the adopted mass-loss scheme. The magnitude and evolution of mass-loss rates significantly affect the main sequence evolution, and the properties of post-main sequence objects,…
Most stars with birth masses larger than that of our Sun belong to binary or higher order multiple systems. Similarly, most stars have stellar winds. Radiation pressure and multiplicity create outflows of material that remove mass from the…
We show that the stellar masses implied by our predictions of the wind properties of massive stars are in agreement with masses derived from evolution theory and from direct measurements using spectroscopic binaries, contrary to previous…
Circumstellar disks play an important role in many stages of the evolution of stars. However, it is only possible to directly image circumstellar disks for a few of the nearest stars. For massive stars, the situation is even more difficult,…
Aims: We study the evolution of stellar rotation and wind properties for low-mass main-sequence stars. Our aim is to use rotational evolution models to constrain the mass loss rates in stellar winds and to predict how their properties…
We compare models of line-driven winds from accretion discs and single spherical stars. We look at the problem of scaling mass-loss rates and velocities of stellar and disc winds with model parameters. We find that stellar and disc winds…