Mass loss from hot massive stars

By J. Puls, J. Vink, F. Najarro. 2008

433 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Mass loss is a key process in the evolution of massive stars, and must be understood quantitatively if it is to be successfully included in broader astrophysical applications such as galactic and cosmic evolution and ionization. In this review, we discuss various aspects of radiation driven mass loss, both from the theoretical and the observational side. We focus on developments in the past decade, concentrating on the winds from OB-stars, with some excursions to the winds from Luminous Blue Variables (including super-Eddington, continuum-driven winds), winds from Wolf–Rayet stars, A-supergiants and Central Stars of Planetary Nebulae. After recapitulating the 1-D, stationary standard model of line-driven winds, extensions accounting for rotation and magnetic fields are discussed. Stationary wind models are presented that provide theoretical predictions for the mass-loss rates as a function of spectral type, metallicity, and the proximity to the Eddington limit. The relevance of the so-called bi-stability jump is outlined. We summarize diagnostical methods to infer wind properties from observations, and compare the results from corresponding campaigns (including the VLT-flames survey of massive stars) with theoretical predictions, featuring the mass loss-metallicity dependence. Subsequently, we concentrate on two urgent problems, weak winds and wind-clumping, that have been identified from various diagnostics and that challenge our present understanding of radiation driven winds. We discuss the problems of “measuring” mass-loss rates from weak winds and the potential of the NIR Brα-line as a tool to enable a more precise quantification, and comment on physical explanations for mass-loss rates that are much lower than predicted by the standard model. Wind-clumping, conventionally interpreted as the consequence of a strong instability inherent to radiative line-driving, has severe implications for the interpretation of observational diagnostics, since derived mass-loss rates are usually overestimated when clumping is present but ignored in the analyses. Depending on the specific diagnostics, such overestimates can amount to factors of 2 to 10, and we describe ongoing attempts to allow for more uniform results. We point out that independent arguments from stellar evolution favor a moderate reduction of present-day mass-loss rates. We also consider larger scale wind structure, interpreted in terms of co-rotating interacting regions, and complete this review with a discussion of recent progress on the X-ray line emission from massive stars. Such emission is thought to originate both from magnetically confined winds and from non-magnetic winds, in the latter case related to the line-driven instability and/or clump-clump collisions. We highlight as to how far the analysis of such X-ray line emission can give further clues regarding an adequate description of wind clumping.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/87e8c1e911948d4f4e5779df8e82cc84bebe64e0

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Citations in the corpus

Production of dust by massive stars at high redshift (2011, background): “The fate of stars more massive than roughly 17–25 M⊙ is sensitive to mass-loss effects, depending on magnetic fields, metallicity, binarity, or rotation, although the details of these dependencies are not well understood (e.g., see for a review Puls et al, 2008).”
TESTING A PREDICTIVE THEORETICAL MODEL FOR THE MASS LOSS RATES OF COOL STARS (2011, background): “Continual mass loss has a significant impact on the evolution of the stars themselves, on surrounding planetary systems, and on the evolution of gas and dust in galaxies (see reviews by Dupree 1986; Lamers & Cassinelli 1999; Puls et al. 2008).”
The VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey XXVII. Physical parameters of B-type main-sequence binary systems in the Tarantula nebula (2017, neutral): “Additionally, mass loss can be signiﬁcant, particularly for more luminous stars and in metal-rich environments (Puls et al. 2008; Mokiem et al. 2007) and this can e ﬀ ect their evolution (Chiosi & Maeder 1986).”
High-mass X-ray binaries in the Milky Way (2013, background): “At present, a general agreement on the formation and characteristics of the clumps is still missing (Puls et al., 2008; Sundqvist et al., 2012; Šurlan et al., 2013).”
RECONCILING THE STELLAR AND NEBULAR SPECTRA OF HIGH-REDSHIFT GALAXIES (2016, background): “…end states, and chemical yields from massive stars all depend on the details of mass loss (e.g., Smith 2014), which itself depends on the initial chemical composition (e.g., Puls et al. 2008; Kudritzki & Puls 2000; Cantiello et al. 2007; Eldridge et al. 2011; Brott et al. 2011; Langer 2012).”
Mass Loss: Its Effect on the Evolution and Fate of High-Mass Stars (2014, background): “Again, see KP0 and Puls et al. (2008) for reviews concerning steady, line-driven winds from hot stars.”
Wind modelling of very massive stars up to 300 solar masses (2011, background): “…ect of rotation to lower the e ﬀ ective gravity; i.e. one could replace the mass by the e ﬀ ective mass ∝ − In a similar vein, one might expect the terminal velocity to scale with the escape velocity, i.e. v ∞ ∝ v ∞ (0) (1 − Ω 2 ) 2 (see e.g. and p Gayley 2000; Puls et al. 2008 references therein).”
Classical Be stars (2013, background): “…found on both sides of the line, similarly to Be stars, but rather originates in an angular momentum conserving stellar wind type outflow (see, e.g., Kaufer et al. 2006 for HD 64760 and Puls et al. 2008 for a general review of hot star winds, and the typically much stronger winds of supergiants).”
Rotating massive main-sequence stars: II. Simulating a population of LMC early B-type stars as a test of rotational mixing (2011, background): “…such as the winds of massive stars with luminosities below ∼105.2 L (e.g. Bouret et al. 2003; Martins et al. 2004, 2005; Mokiem et al. 2007; Puls et al. 2008), intermittent discrete absorption components in UV absorption lines (Prinja & Howarth 1988; Kaper et al. 1997), micro- and…”
EVOLUTION OF MASSIVE STARS WITH PULSATION-DRIVEN SUPERWINDS DURING THE RED SUPERGIANT PHASE (2010, background): “Great improvements in our understanding of line-driven winds from massive hot stars (i.e., O-Type stars or Wolf-Rayet stars) have been achieved over the last three decades, and they are well reflected in recent stellar evolution models (see Puls et al. 2008, for a recent review).”
Binary Interaction Dominates the Evolution of Massive Stars (2012, background): “over about 30 solar masses, the maximum orbital period is uncertain because such stars experience significant mass loss, by stellar winds (43, 44) and eruptions (45), which may prevent them from reaching red supergiant dimensions.”
THE EFFECTS OF STELLAR ROTATION. II. A COMPREHENSIVE SET OF STARBURST99 MODELS (2014, background): “First, the mass-loss rates (Ṁ) of hot stars due to stellar winds had been overestimated by factors of several because wind inhomogeneities had not been taken into account (Puls et al. 2008).”