Related papers: Structure and Dynamics of Stellar Winds in High-ma…
The common - arguably ubiquitous - large-scale variability of optical and UV lines profiles of hot, massive stars is widely interpreted as the direct consequence of structured, variable winds. Many of the variability phenomena are observed…
A population of obscured supergiant High Mass X-ray Binaries (sgHMXBs) has been discovered by INTEGRAL. X-ray wind tomography of IGR J17252-3616 inferred a slow wind velocity to account for the enhanced obscuration. The main goal of this…
In latest years, the high sensitivity of the instruments on-board the XMM-Newton and Chandra satellites allowed us to explore the properties of the X-ray emission from hot subdwarf stars. The small but growing sample of X-ray detected hot…
The accretion onto the black hole in the system HDE 226868/Cygnus X-1 is powered by the strong line driven stellar wind of the O-type donor star. We study the X-ray properties of the stellar wind in the hard state of Cyg X-1 as determined…
We present theoretical X-ray line profiles from a range of model colliding wind systems. In particular, we investigate the effects of varying the stellar mass-loss rates, the wind speeds, and the viewing orientation. We find that a wide…
The high luminosity of massive, early-type stars drives strong stellar winds through line scattering of the stars continuum radiation. Their momenta contribute substantially to the dynamics and energetics of the ambient interstellar medium…
We consider the consequences of appreciable line optical depth for the profile shape of X-ray emission lines formed in stellar winds. The hot gas is thought to arise in distributed wind shocks, and the line formation is predominantly via…
Binary systems in which a neutron star or black hole accretes material from a high-mass star are known as high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs). This chapter provides a brief introduction to the physics of wind accretion and an observational…
Aims. X1908+075 is a supergiant X-ray binary (SgXB) composed of an evolved OB star and a neutron star (NS) in a 4.4-day orbit. We aim to characterize the stellar wind, constrain the system geometry, and investigate the origin and…
We present results from Hubble Space Telescope UV spectroscopy of the massive X-ray binary system, HD226868 = Cyg X-1. The spectra were obtained at both orbital conjunction phases in two separate runs in 2002 and 2003 when the system was in…
High-resolution spectra of the magnetic star HD191612 were acquired using the Chandra X-ray observatory at both maximum and minimum emission phases. We confirm the flux and hardness variations previously reported with XMM-Newton,…
Magnetically confined winds of early-type stars are expected to be sources of bright and hard X-rays. To clarify the systematics of the observed X-ray properties, we have analyzed a large series of Chandra and XMM observations,…
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…
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,…
Wind-fed supergiant X-ray binaries are precious laboratories not only to study accretion under extreme gravity and magnetic field conditions, but also to probe still highly debated properties of massive star winds. These includes the…
Several gamma-ray binaries show extended X-ray emission that may be associated to interactions of an outflow with the medium. Some of these systems are, or may be, high-mass binaries harboring young nonaccreting pulsars, in which the…
In this paper we summarize some aspects of the wind accretion theory in high mass X-ray binaries hosting a magnetic neutron star and a supergiant companion. In particular, we concentrate on the different types of interaction between the…
Strong wind-wind collisions in massive binaries generate a very hot plasma that frequently produces a moderately strong iron line. The morphology of this line depends upon the properties of the wind interaction zone and its orientation with…
We investigate the structure and X-ray emission from the colliding stellar winds in massive star binaries. We find that the opening angle of the contact discontinuity (CD) is overestimated by several formulae in the literature at very small…
Recent discoveries have confirmed the existence of a large population of X-ray sources fuelled by accretion from the stellar wind of an OB supergiant. Such systems are powerful laboratories to study many aspects of astrophysics. Over the…