The Structure of Wolf-Rayet Winds. I. Observation of Ionization Stratification in WR 6 and WR 111

Details The Structure of Wolf-Rayet Winds. I. Observation of Ionization Stratification in WR 6 and WR 111 The Structure of Wolf-Rayet Winds. I. Observation of Ionization Stratification in WR 6 and WR 111

Dec 1995

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1995apj...454..917s&link_type=abstract

Astrophysical Journal v.454, p.917

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

21

Line: Formation, Stars: Individual Alphanumeric: Wr 6, Stars: Individual Alphanumeric: Wr 111, Stars: Mass Loss, Stars: Wolf-Rayet

Scientific paper

Although it is widely believed that the winds of Wolf-Rayet stars are driven by radiation pressure, a major problem has been to explain theoretically the observation of very efficient conversion of radiative momentum to the gas. Known as the "momentum problem," this has led to alternative models in which the radiation force is only one of the forces acting on a W-R wind others could be due to stellar rotation and a magnetic field, or result from stellar pulsations.
In a recent paper, Lucy & Abbott (1993) showed that radiation alone could drive the wind of WR 6 if strong ionization stratification in the wind causes sufficient line overlap so as to increase the momentum deposition via multiple scattering to the observationally required amount. Ionization stratification in an accelerated outflow should be observable as an inverse correlation of ionization potential with line width, and this has been noticed in a few stars in the literature. We here present multiwavelength data sets which demonstrate observationally that the ionization in the winds of the two prototype stars of the WN and WC sequences, WR 6 (WN 5) and WR 111 (WC 5), decreases outward. We discuss how the data compare with the "standard model" for these two stars.

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