2014/05/19 by Christopher M. P. Russell, Atsuo T. Okazaki, Russell, Christopher M. P. +12
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #FOS: Physical sciences #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR) #astro-ph.HE #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1405.4803
2 pages, 3 figures, Proceedings from "Suzaku-MAXI 2014: Expanding the Frontiers of the X-ray Universe"
arxiv created 2014/05/19 · openalex publication_date 2014/05/19 · arxiv updated 2014/05/20 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Colliding wind binaries (CWBs) are unique laboratories for X-ray astrophysics. The massive stars in these systems possess powerful stellar winds with speeds up to ∼3000 km s-1, and their collision leads to hot plasma (up to ∼108K) that emit thermal X-rays (up to ∼10 keV). Many X-ray telescopes have observed CWBs, including Suzaku, and our work aims to model these X-ray observations. We use 3D smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) to model the wind-wind interaction, and then perform 3D radiative transfer to compute the emergent X-ray flux, which is folded through X-ray telescopes' response functions to compare directly with observations. In these proceedings, we present our models of Suzaku observations of the multi-year-period, highly eccentric systems η Carinae and WR 140. The models reproduce the observations well away from periastron passage, but only η Carinae's X-ray spectrum is reproduced at periastron; the WR 140 model produces too much flux during this more complicated phase.