Atmospheric Diagnostics of Wolf-Rayet Stars

Abstract

Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars are the descendants of massive stars that have lost their hydrogen rich envelope. Recently more accurate data on WR stars have become available: mass-loss rates (van der Hucht et al. 1986), radii and luminosities (Underhill 1983, Nussbaumer et al. 1982).It may therefore be worthwhile to investigate if combinations of observed parameters shed some light on the structure of the extended stellar wind of WR stars.In many WR stars the photosphere is situated in the stellar wind. We assume that the wind is stationary and isotropic. Further we assume a velocity law v(r)=v∞(1−Rs/r)β where v∞ is the terminal velocity of the wind in km/s, Rs is the radius where the wind acceleration starts and β > 0 is a free parameter. We can then easily compute the level R in the wind where the photosphere is located (de Loore et al. 1982): R is the solution of the equation 6.27 10−9 τat R v∞/ = fβ(Rs/R) where τat is the optical depth at the photosphere (2/3 or 1), (>0) is the mass loss rate in M⊙/yr and fβ > 1 is a slowly varying function (Doom 1987).