Physical Properties of Wolf-Rayet Stars

By P. Crowther. 2006

756 citations recorded by the source corpus.

AbstractThe striking broad emission line spectroscopic appearance of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars has long defied analysis, owing to the extreme physical conditions within their line- and continuum-formin...

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ccc0acef48e31129e59c5a174263cc1b0f7ad0d8

How researchers see this paper

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. S. Smartt
2. N. Smith
3. C. Conroy
4. Michela Mapelli
5. Stan Woosley
6. P. Hopkins
7. N. Langer
8. L. Hernquist

In Instrumentation

1. N. Smith
2. C. Conroy
3. S. Smartt
4. N. Langer
5. P. Hopkins
6. Naveen A. Reddy
7. Stan Woosley
8. L. Hernquist

Citations in the corpus

• The R136 star cluster hosts several stars whose individual masses greatly exceed the accepted 150 M⊙ stellar mass limit (2010, background): “In contrast to classical WR stars, these WN stars are believed to be young, main-sequence stars, albeit possessing very strong stellar winds as a result of their high stellar luminosities (Crowther 2007).”
• Production of dust by massive stars at high redshift (2011, background): “Stars more massive than 25 M⊙ evolve into WR stars and likely explode as Ib or Ic SNe (Massey and Olsen, 2003; Crowther, 2007).”
• SPITZER SAGE INFRARED PHOTOMETRY OF MASSIVE STARS IN THE LARGE MAGELLANIC CLOUD (2009, background): “While most WR stars are thought to be post-main-sequence stars with progenitor masses greater than 25–75 M (depending on the subtype; Crowther 2007), there is increasing evidence that the late-type WN stars with hydrogen in their spectra are hydrogen-burning stars with initial masses above 40–60 M…”
• Progenitors of gravitational wave mergers: binary evolution with the stellar grid-based code ComBinE (2018, background): “If such a star is more massive than about 8 M it is often observable as a Wolf-Rayet star (Crowther 2007).”
• Toward Understanding Massive Star Formation (2007, neutral): “The present Annual Reviews article will be accompanied in the same volume by an article on ’Physical properties of Wolf-Rayet stars’ (Crowther 2007) and an article on ’Theory of Star Formation’ (McKee & Ostriker 2007) which mostly addresses low-mass star formation, but also includes an important…”
• Mass loss from late-type WN stars and its Z-dependence: very massive stars approaching the Eddington limit (2008, background): “Our models thus support an evolutionary sequence of the form O→ WNL (H-rich) → LBV → WN (H-poor)→ WC for very massive stars, as proposed by Langer et al. (1994).”
• Light-curve modelling of superluminous supernova 2006gy: collision between supernova ejecta and a dense circumstellar medium (2012, background): “Although LBVs are theoretically considered to be on the way to Wolf–Rayet stars and hence would not explode (e.g. Crowther 2007; Vink 2009), the progenitor of Type IIn SN 2005gl was found to be an LBV (Gal-Yam et al. 2007; Gal-Yam & Leonard 2009).”
• Forming short-period Wolf–Rayet X-ray binaries and double black holes through stable mass transfer (2017, methodology): “…of masses of WR stars, either in binary systems or from their absolute luminosities have shown that, in order to show the typical WR spectral characteristics produced by a dense high-velocity stellar wind outflow, the helium stars must have a mass >∼ 10(±2) M (Crowther 2007; Sander et al. 2012).”
• THE EARLY UV/OPTICAL EMISSION FROM CORE-COLLAPSE SUPERNOVAE (2010, background): “…dominated by He, C/O, and He-C/O mixtures representing different degrees of H/He stripping, due to wind mass loss (e.g. Woosley et al. 1993) or binary interaction (e.g. Nomoto et al. 1995), and different evolution scenarios (e.g. due to rotation induced mixing, Meynet & Maeder 2003; Crowther 2007).”
• Core-collapse explosions of Wolf–Rayet stars and the connection to Type IIb/Ib/Ic supernovae (2011, background): “…most W-R stars are inferred to stem from stars with a main-sequence mass in excess of 25 M⊙, potentially extending to huge masses of a few 100 M⊙ (Crowther et al. 2010), generically characterised by a large luminosity of 105–106 L⊙ and large mass-loss rates of∼10−5M⊙ yr−1 (Crowther 2007).”
• Nearby Supernova Rates from the Lick Observatory Supernova Search. II. The Observed Luminosity Functions and Fractions of Supernovae in a Complete Sample (2010, background): “…in more luminous galaxies may indicate a metallicity effect (e.g., Tremonti et al. 2004) on the evolution of massive stars, such as by affecting the line-driven winds for the massive star that eventually explodes as the SN (Vink et al. 2001; Heger et al. 2003; Vink & de Koter 2005; Crowther 2007).”
• Dust Formation and He II λ4686 Emission in the Dense Shell of the Peculiar Type Ib Supernova 2006jc (2007, result): “…of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars, but the intermediate-width He i lines in these three objects indicate much denser circumstellar material (CSM) than that around all other SNe Ib/c, and similarly, inferred progenitor mass-loss rates much higher than those typically observed in WR stars (Crowther 2007).”
• Characterizing Supernova Progenitors via the Metallicities of their Host Galaxies, from Poor Dwarfs to Rich Spirals (2007, background): “However, SNe Ib/c lack hydrogen (Ib) or both hydrogen and helium (Ic) in their spectra and are therefore thought to haveWolf-Rayet (WR) stars as progenitors (see Crowther 2007 for a review).”
• RECONCILING THE STELLAR AND NEBULAR SPECTRA OF HIGH-REDSHIFT GALAXIES (2016, background): “In parallel, it has also been established that most massive stars do not evolve as single stars, but as part of binary systems (Crowther 2007; Sana et al. 2012).”
• THE PROPAGATION OF RELATIVISTIC JETS IN EXTERNAL MEDIA (2011, background): “To model the star they used a numerically calculated density profile fromWoosley & Heger (2006) (model number HE16N in Mizuta & Aloy 2009).”
• THE GALACTIC O-STAR SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY (GOSSS). II. BRIGHT SOUTHERN STARS (2013, methodology): “There are no WNVL stars in the present sample according to our criteria; however, note that Crowther (2007) includes some of our O Iafpe objects in his WN9-10 classes (see also Walborn 2009a).”
• Luminous blue variables are antisocial: their isolation implies that they are kicked mass gainers in binary evolution (2014, background): “In this case, however, the remaining He cores would be more massive than any observed H-free WR stars (Smith & Conti 2008; Crowther 2007).”
• FROM SHOCK BREAKOUT TO PEAK AND BEYOND: EXTENSIVE PANCHROMATIC OBSERVATIONS OF THE TYPE Ib SUPERNOVA 2008D ASSOCIATED WITH SWIFT X-RAY TRANSIENT 080109 (2008, background): “Their radii are in the range 1–20 R⊙ with typical sizes between 5−10 R⊙ (Herald et al. 2001; Hamann et al. 2006; Crowther 2007).”
• Spectral models for binary products: Unifying subdwarfs and Wolf-Rayet stars as a sequence of stripped-envelope stars (2018, background): “No O-type star has a confirmed binary stripped companion in the intermediate mass range, although several Wolf-Rayet plus O-type star systems are known (e.g., van der Hucht 2001; Crowther 2007; Shara et al. 2017).”