Related papers: Wolf-Rayet Colliding Wind Binaries
Clumping in hot star winds can significantly affect estimates of mass-loss rates, the inferred evolution of the star and the environmental impact of the wind. A hydrodynamical simulation of a colliding winds binary (CWB) with clumpy winds…
Massive stars feature highly energetic stellar winds that interact whenever two such stars are bound in a binary system. The signatures of these interactions are nowadays found over a wide range of wavelengths, including the radio domain,…
Classical Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars are at a crucial evolutionary stage for constraining the fates of massive stars. The feedback of these hot, hydrogen-depleted stars dominates their surrounding by tremendous injections of ionizing radiation…
Gamma-ray binaries are colliding wind binaries (CWB) composed of a massive star a non-accreting pulsar with a highly relativistic wind. Particle acceleration at the shocks results in emission going from extended radio emission to the…
Several long-period binaries with a carbon-rich Wolf-Rayet star and an O star produce dust in their wind collisions. In eccentric binaries, this is seen most strongly near periastron passage. The exact conditions leading to dust creation…
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…
Observations of the WC9+OB system WR 65 in the infrared show variations of its dust emission consistent with a period near 4.8~yr, suggesting formation in a colliding-wind binary (CWB) having an elliptical orbit. If we adopt the IR maximum…
Recent observations of Wolf-Rayet (WR) binaries WR151 and WR155 infer that their stellar winds are asymmetric. We show that such asymmetries can alter the stellar-wind bubble structure, bringing the wind-termination shock closer to the WR…
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…
We have analysed the X-ray emission from a sample of close WR+O binaries using data from the public Chandra and XMM-Newton archives. Global spectral fits show that two-temperature plasma is needed to match the X-ray emission from these…
With their emission-line dominated spectra, the appearance of Wolf-Rayet stars is shaped by their strong stellar winds. Yet, the physical mechanisms behind their high mass loss have long remained enigmatic. While we know nowadays that…
We report the discovery of variability in the X-ray emission from the Wolf-Rayet type star WR 65. Using archival Chandra data spanning over 5 yr we detect changes of the X-ray flux by a factor of 3 accompanied by changes in the X-ray…
Colliding winds in massive binaries generate X-ray-bright shocks, synchrotron radio emission, and sometimes even dusty "pinwheel" spirals. We report the first X-ray detections of the dusty WC+O binary system WR 112 from Chandra and Swift,…
Spectroscopic observations have shown for decades that the Wolf-Rayet (WR) phenomenon is ubiquitous among stars with different initial masses. Although much effort to understand the winds from massive WR stars has been presented in the…
Context: Recent gamma-ray observations of young star clusters revealed that stellar wind termination shocks accelerate particles, with the energy reservoir provided by the mechanical power of massive-star winds. Aims: Our goal is to…
Context: Massive colliding-wind binaries (CWBs) can be non-thermal sources. The emission produced in their wind-collision region (WCR) encodes information of both the shocks properties and the relativistic electrons accelerated in them. The…
We attempt to determine the driver for clumping in hot-star winds by extending the measure of the spectral variability level of Galactic Wolf-Rayet stars to by far the hottest known among them, the WN2 star WR 2 and the WO2 stars WR 102 and…
The collapsar model requires rapidly rotating Wolf-Rayet stars as progenitors of long gamma-ray bursts. However, Galactic Wolf-Rayet stars rapidly lose angular momentum due to their intense stellar winds. We investigate whether the tidal…
Context. Oxygen sequence Wolf-Rayet (WO) stars represent a very rare stage in the evolution of massive stars. Their spectra show strong emission lines of helium-burning products, in particular highly ionized carbon and oxygen. The…
Because most massive stars have been or will be affected by a companion during the course of their evolution, we cannot afford to neglect binaries when discussing the progenitors of supernovae and GRBs. Analyzing linear polarization in the…