The Link between Radiation-Driven Winds and Pulsation in Massive Stars

Abstract

AbstractHot, luminous, massive stars have strong stellar winds driven by line-scattering of the star’s continuum radiation. They are also often observed to exhibit radial or non-radial pulsations. Such pulsations are possible candidates for providing the base perturbations that induce large-scale structure in the overlying wind, and as such they could help explain various observational manifestions of wind variability, e.g., absorption enhancemens or modulations in UV P-Cygni lines of OB stars, and perhaps even moving bumps in optical emission lines of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars. Here we review the physics of line driving, with emphasis on how perturbations induce variations in a wind outflow. In particular, we present results of a time-dependent dynamical simulation of wind variations induced by the radial pulsation of the β Cep variable BW Vulpeculae, and show that observed variability in UV wind lines can be quite well reproduced by synthetic line profiles for this model. We conclude with a discussion of recent evidence that resonances among multiple modes of non-radial pulsation in Be stars play a role in inducing mass ejections that contribute to formation of a circumstellar disk.