Related papers: X-ray emission lines from inhomogeneous stellar wi…
X-ray emission line profiles provide the most direct insight into the dynamics and spatial distribution of the hot, X-ray-emitting plasma above the surfaces of OB stars. The O supergiant zeta Puppis shows broad, blueshifted, and asymmetric…
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…
X-ray line profile analysis has proved to be the most direct diagnostic of the kinematics and spatial distribution of the very hot plasma around O stars. In this paper we apply several analysis techniques to the emission lines in the…
High mass X-ray binaries hold the promise of giving us understanding of the structure of the winds of their supermassive companion stars by using the emission from the compact object as a backlight to evaluate the variable absorption in the…
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…
Blue shifted absorption lines from highly ionised iron are seen in some high inclination X-ray binary systems, indicating the presence of an equatorial disc wind. This launch mechanism is under debate, but thermal driving should be…
We investigate the connections between the magnetic fields and the X-ray emission from massive stars. Our study shows that the X-ray properties of known strongly magnetic stars are diverse: while some comply to the predictions of the…
Winds arising from galaxies, star clusters, and active galactic nuclei are crucial players in star and galaxy formation, but it has proven remarkably difficult to use observations of them to determine physical properties of interest,…
Mass-loss rates currently in use for hot, massive stars have recently been seriously questioned, mainly because of the effects of wind clumping. We investigate the impact of clumping on diagnostic ultraviolet resonance and optical…
We discuss the development of the new radiative transfer code Wind3D. It solves the non-LTE radiative transport problem in moving stellar atmosphere models in three geometric dimensions. The code accepts arbitrary 3D velocity fields in…
We present results from quantitative modeling and spectral analysis of the high mass X-ray binary Vela X-1 obtained with the Chandra HETGS. The spectra exhibit emission lines from H-like and He-like ions driven by photoionization, as well…
We present initial attempts to include the multi-dimensional nature of radiation transport in hydrodynamical simulations of the small-scale structure that arises from the line-driven instability in hot-star winds. Compared to previous 1D or…
The clumpy stellar wind from the companion star in high mass X-ray binaries causes variable, partial absorption of the emission from the X-ray source. We studied XMM-Newton observations from the 7.22 d-long "Cyg X-1 Hard state Observations…
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…
We study the influence of X-ray radiation on the wind parameters of O stars. For this purpose we use our own NLTE wind code. The X-ray emission (assumed to be generated in wind shocks) is treated as an input quantity. We study its influence…
Massive stars show a variety of spectral variability: presence of discrete absorption components in UV P-Cygni profiles, optical line profile variability, X-ray variability, radial velocity modulations. Our goal is to study the spectral…
Observations with space-borne X-ray telescopes revealed the existence of soft, diffuse X-ray emission from the inner regions of planetary nebulae. Although the existing images support the idea that this emission arises from the hot shocked…
Stellar winds of massive stars are known to be driven by line absorption of UV photons, a mechanism which is prone to instabilities, causing the wind to be clumpy. The clumpy structure hampers wind mass-loss estimates, limiting our…
The migration of profile sub-peaks identified in time-monitored optical emission lines of Wolf-Rayet star spectra provides a direct diagnostic of the dynamics of their stellar winds via a measured line-of-sight velocity change per unit…
The atmospheres of massive O-type stars (O stars) are dynamic, turbulent environments resulting from radiatively driven instabilities over the iron bump, located slightly beneath the stellar surface. Here, complex radiation hydrodynamic…