Fakultät für Physik und Astronomie
STEPHEN PHILLIPS hostreviews.co.uk / UNSPLASH

Can velocity fields explain the Wolf-Rayet radius problem?

Roel Lefever , ARI

Massive stars play a dominant role in the energetics of their host galaxies, primarily by their radiation-driven winds enriching their local stellar environments and by ionizing radiation. A subset of the massive stars, the Wolf-Rayet stars, which are direct progenitors of stellar-mass black holes, have particularly strong stellar winds. These winds are so powerful that they effectively push away the outer layers of the Wolf-Rayet star, obscuring it from sight. Hence, only the stellar wind can be observed from Earth. To infer stellar parameters, one needs to rely on a proper modelling of the winds of these stars. In this talk, I will show the deficiencies of the current wind modelling for Wolf-Rayet stars along with accompanying uncertainties on stellar parameters with solutions to construct more accurate models.

ARI Institute Colloquium
20 Jan 2022, 11:15
ARI, Moenchhofstrasse 12-14, Seminarraum 1, 1.OG

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