TY - JOUR
T1 - Magnetically confined wind shocks in X-rays – A review
AU - ud-Doula, Asif
AU - Nazé, Yaël
N1 - Funding Information:
AuD acknowledges support by NASA through Chandra Award number TM4-15001A and 16200111 issued by the Chandra X-ray Observatory Center which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for and behalf of NASA under contract NAS8-03060. AuD also acknowledges support for Program number HST-GO-13629.008-A provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract NAS5-26555. YN acknowledge support from the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (Belgium), the PRODEX XMM contract, and an ARC grant for Concerted Research Action financed by the Federation Wallonia-Brussels.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 COSPAR
PY - 2016/9/1
Y1 - 2016/9/1
N2 - A subset (∼10%) of massive stars present strong, globally ordered (mostly dipolar) magnetic fields. The trapping and channeling of their stellar winds in closed magnetic loops leads to magnetically confined wind shocks (MCWS), with pre-shock flow speeds that are some fraction of the wind terminal speed. These shocks generate hot plasma, a source of X-rays. In the last decade, several developments took place, notably the determination of the hot plasma properties for a large sample of objects using XMM and Chandra, as well as fully self-consistent MHD modeling and the identification of shock retreat effects in weak winds. Despite a few exceptions, the combination of magnetic confinement, shock retreat and rotation effects seems to be able to account for X-ray emission in massive OB stars. Here we review these new observational and theoretical aspects of this X-ray emission and envisage some perspectives for the next generation of X-ray observatories.
AB - A subset (∼10%) of massive stars present strong, globally ordered (mostly dipolar) magnetic fields. The trapping and channeling of their stellar winds in closed magnetic loops leads to magnetically confined wind shocks (MCWS), with pre-shock flow speeds that are some fraction of the wind terminal speed. These shocks generate hot plasma, a source of X-rays. In the last decade, several developments took place, notably the determination of the hot plasma properties for a large sample of objects using XMM and Chandra, as well as fully self-consistent MHD modeling and the identification of shock retreat effects in weak winds. Despite a few exceptions, the combination of magnetic confinement, shock retreat and rotation effects seems to be able to account for X-ray emission in massive OB stars. Here we review these new observational and theoretical aspects of this X-ray emission and envisage some perspectives for the next generation of X-ray observatories.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.asr.2015.09.025
DO - 10.1016/j.asr.2015.09.025
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84951767407
SN - 0273-1177
VL - 58
SP - 680
EP - 693
JO - Advances in Space Research
JF - Advances in Space Research
IS - 5
ER -