Line‐driven Winds, Ionizing Fluxes, and Ultraviolet Spectra of Hot Stars at Extremely Low Metallicity. I. Very Massive O Stars

Abstract

Wind models of very massive stars with metallicities in a range from 1E-4 to 1.0 solar are calculated using a new treatment of radiation driven winds with depth dependent radiative force multipliers and a comprehensive list of more than two million spectral lines in NLTE. The models are tested by a comparison with observed stellar wind properties of O stars in the Galaxy and the SMC. Satisfying agreement is found. The calculations yield mass-loss rates, wind velocities, wind momenta and wind energies as a function of metallicity and can be used to discuss the influence of stellar winds on the evolution of very massive stars in the early universe and on the interstellar medium in the early phases of galaxy formation. The normal scaling laws, which predict stellar mass-loss rates and wind momenta to decrease as a power law with metal abundance break down at a certain threshold. Analytical fit formulae for mass-loss rates are provided as a function of stellar parameters and metallicity. The new wind models are applied to calculate ionizing fluxes and observable spectra of very massive stars as a function of metallicity using the new hydrodynamic, non-LTE line-blanketed flux constant model atmosphere code developed by Pauldrach et al. Numbers of ionizing photons for the crucial ionization stages are given. For a fixed effective temperature the He II ionizing emergent flux depends very strongly on metallicity but also on stellar luminosity. A strong dependence on metallicity is also found for the C III, Ne II and O II ionizing photons, whereas the H I and He I ionizing flux is almost independent of metallicity. We also calculate UV spectra for all the models and discuss the behaviour of significant line features as a function of metallicity.