The Effect of Porosity on X-ray Emission Line Profiles from Hot-Star Winds

dc.creatorOwocki, Stanley P.
dc.creatorCohen, David H.
dc.date2006-02-02
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T10:43:35Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T10:43:35Z
dc.descriptionWe investigate the degree to which the nearly symmetric form of X-ray emission lines seen in Chandra spectra of early-type supergiant stars could be explained by a possibly porous nature of their spatially structured stellar winds. Such porosity could effectively reduce the bound-free absorption of X-rays emitted by embedded wind shocks, and thus allow a more similar transmission of red- vs. blue-shifted emission from the back vs. front hemispheres. For a medium consisting of clumps of size l and volume filling factor f, in which the `porosity length' h=l/f increases with local radius as h = h' r, we find that a substantial reduction in wind absorption requires a quite large porosity scale factor h' > 1, implying large porosity lengths h > r. The associated wind structure must thus have either a relatively large scale l~ r, or a small volume filling factor f ~ l/r << 1, or some combination of these. The relatively small-scale, moderate compressions generated by intrinsic instabilities in line-driving seem unlikely to give such large porosity lengths, leaving again the prospect of instead having to invoke a substantial (ca. factor 5) downward revision in assumed mass-loss rates.
dc.description6 pages in apj-emulate; 3 figures; submitted to ApJ
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0602054
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0602054
dc.identifierAstrophys.J.648:565-571,2006
dc.identifierdoi:10.1086/505698
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/182295
dc.subjectAstrophysics
dc.titleThe Effect of Porosity on X-ray Emission Line Profiles from Hot-Star Winds
dc.typetext

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