Related papers: Ultraviolet Spectropolarimetry with Polstar: Massi…
Massive systems made of two or more stars are known to be the site for interesting physical processes -- including at least in some cases -- particle acceleration. Over the past decade, this topic motivated a particular effort to unveil the…
Massive star binaries are critical laboratories for measuring masses and stellar wind mass-loss rates. A major challenge is inferring viewing inclination and extracting information about the colliding wind interaction (CWI) region.…
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,…
Context. In binary star systems, the winds from the two components impact each other, leading to strong shocks and regions of enhanced density and temperature. Potentially habitable circumbinary planets must continually be exposed to these…
Photospheric radiation momentum is efficiently transferred by absorption through metal lines to the gaseous matter in the atmospheres of massive stars, sustaining strong winds and mass loss rates. Not only is this critical for the evolution…
Massive stars are extremely luminous and drive strong winds, blowing a large part of their matter into the galactic environment before they finally explode as a supernova. Quantitative knowledge of massive star feedback is required to…
Winds of massive stars are an important ingredient in determining their evolution, final remnant mass, and feedback to the surrounding interstellar medium. We compare empirical results for OB star winds at low metallicity with theoretical…
Mass-loss from massive stars is fundamental to stellar and galactic evolution and enrichment of the interstellar medium. Reliable determination of mass-loss rate is dependent upon unravelling details of massive star outflows, including…
Understanding the complex behavior of High Mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) is not possible without detailed information about their donor stars. While crucial, this turns out to be a challenge on multiple fronts. First, multi-wavelength…
Context: Starbursts, and particularly their high-mass stars, play an essential role in the evolution of galaxies. The winds of massive stars not only significantly influence their surroundings, but the mass loss also profoundly affects the…
The dynamics of the wind-wind collision in massive stellar binaries is investigated using three-dimensional hydrodynamical models which incorporate gravity, the driving of the winds, the orbital motion of the stars, and radiative cooling of…
High-mass binaries hosting young pulsars can be powerful gamma-ray emitters. The stellar wind of the massive star in the system is expected to be clumpy. Since the high-energy emission comes from the pulsar-star wind interaction, the…
In a high-mass X-ray binary (HMXB) a massive star interacts with a neutron-star or black-hole companion in various ways. The gravitational interaction enables the measurement of fundamental parameters such as the mass of both binary…
High-resolution radio observations have revealed that non-thermal radio emission in WR stars arises where the stellar wind of the WR star collides with that of a binary companion. These colliding-wind binary (CWB) systems offer an important…
The Polstar small explorer concept is for an ultraviolet (UV) spectropolarimetry space telescope mission with a focus on massive star astrophysics. The instrument waveband will be from 115 nm - 286 nm for spectroscopy and 122 nm - 286 nm…
Binary systems containing a massive star and a non-accreting pulsar present strong interaction between the stellar and the pulsar winds. The properties of this interaction, which largely determine the non-thermal radiation in these systems,…
Colliding winds of massive stars in binary systems are considered as candidate sites of high-energy non-thermal photon emission. They are already among the suggested counterparts for a few individual unidentified EGRET sources, but may…
I start with a discussion of spherical winds and small-scale clumping, before continuing with various theories that have been proposed to predict how mass loss depends on stellar rotation -- both in terms of wind strength, as well as the…
We present a 3D dynamical model of the orbital induced curvature of the wind-wind collision region in binary star systems. Momentum balance equations are used to determine the position and shape of the contact discontinuity between the…
The evolution of massive stars in general, massive close binaries in particular depend on processes where, despite many efforts, the physics are still uncertain. Here we discuss the effects of stellar wind as function of metallicity during…