Related papers: Wind suppression by X-rays in Cygnus X-3
B supergiants (BSGs) are evolved stars with effective temperatures between 10 to 30 kK and are important to understand massive star evolution. Located on the edge of the line-driven wind regime, the study of their atmospheres is helpful to…
We investigate the degree to which the nearly symmetric form of X-ray emission lines seen in Chandra spectra of early-type supergiant stars could be explained by a possibly porous nature of their spatially structured stellar winds. Such…
We report on a Spitzer/IRS (mid-infrared), RXTE/PCA+HEXTE (X-ray), and Ryle (radio) simultaneous multiwavelength study of the microquasar Cygnus X-1, which aimed at an investigation of the origin of its mid-infrared emission. Compact jets…
In wind-fed X-ray binaries the accreting matter is Compton cooled and falls freely onto the compact object. The matter has a modest angular momentum $l$ and accretion is quasi-spherical at large distances from the compact object. Initially…
The dynamics of colliding wind binary systems and conditions for efficient particle acceleration therein have attracted multiple numerical studies in the recent years. These numerical models seek an explanation of the thermal and…
Towards the end of their evolution hot massive stars develop strong stellar winds and appear as emission line stars, such as WR stars or LBVs. The quantitative description of the mass loss in these important pre-SN phases is hampered by…
Winds are an important ingredient in the evolution of X-ray binary (XRB) systems, particularly those at high accretion rates such as ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs), because they may regulate the accretion of matter onto the compact…
Hercules X-1 is one of the best studied highly magnetised neutron star X-ray binaries with a wealth of archival data. We present the discovery of an ionised wind in its X-ray spectrum when the source is in the high state. The wind detection…
We calculate the X-ray luminosity and light curve for the stellar binary system Eta Carinae for the entire orbital period of 5.54 years. By using a new approach we find, as suggested before, that the collision of the winds blown by the two…
Cyg X-3 is a highly interesting accreting X-ray binary, emitting from the radio to high-energy gamma-rays. It consists of a compact object wind-fed by a Wolf-Rayet (WR) star, but the masses of the components and the mass-loss rate have been…
We show that the orbital variation in the UV P Cygni lines of the X-ray binary LMC X-4 results when X-rays photoionize nearly the entire region outside of the X-ray shadow of the normal star. We fit models to HST GHRS observations of N V…
We have formulated the momentum equation for sectorial line driven winds from rotating stars including: (a) the oblateness of the star, (b) gravity darkening (von Zeipel effect), (c) conservation of angular momentum, (d) line driving…
Archival X-ray spectra of the four prominent single, non-magnetic O stars Zeta Pup, Zeta Ori, Ksi Per and Zeta Oph, obtained in high resolution with Chandra HETGS/MEG have been studied. The resolved X-ray emission line profiles provide…
Cen X-3 is a compact high mass X-ray binary likely powered by Roche lobe overflow. We present a phase-resolved X-ray spectral and timing analysis of two pointed XMM-Newton observations. The first one took place during a normal state of the…
3A 1954+319 has been classified for a long time as a symbiotic X-ray binary, hosting a slowly rotating neutron star and an aged M red giant. Recently, this classification has been revised thanks to the discovery that the donor star is an M…
We analyse two ASCA observations of the highly eccentric O9III + B1III binary Iota Orionis obtained at periastron and apastron. Based on the assumption of a strong colliding winds shock between the stellar components, we expected to see…
High-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) are exceptional astrophysical laboratories that offer a rare glimpse into the physical processes that govern accretion on compact objects, massive-star winds, and stellar evolution. In a subset of the HMXBs,…
Recent results strongly challenge the canonical picture of massive star winds: various evidence indicates that currently accepted mass-loss rates, Mdot, may need to be revised downwards significantly. This is because the most commonly used…
We present a new model of the population of symbiotic X-ray binaries (SyXBs) that takes into account non-stationary character of quasi-spherical sub-sonic accretion of the red giant's stellar wind onto slowly rotating neutron stars. Updates…
High-mass gamma-ray binaries are powerful nonthermal galactic sources, some of them hosting a pulsar whose relativistic wind interacts with a likely inhomogeneous stellar wind. So far, modeling these sources including stellar wind…