2015/09/22 by Asif ud‐Doula, Asif ud-Doula, Yaël Nazé +1 · 35 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrobiology #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Atmospheric sciences #Environmental science #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Geology #Nuclear physics #Physics #Plasma #Remote sensing #Solar wind #astro-ph.HE #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.asr.2015.09.025
published in Advances in Space Research 58(5), 680-693 (Elsevier BV) · accepted for publication by Advances in Space Research (special issue "X-ray emission from hot stars and their winds")
arxiv created 2015/09/22 · openalex publication_date 2015/10/14 · arxiv updated 2016/08/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
A subset (~ 10%) of massive stars present strong, globally ordered (mostly dipolar) magnetic fields. The trapping and channeling of their stellar winds in closed magnetic loops leads to magnetically confined wind shocks (MCWS), with pre-shock flow speeds that are some fraction of the wind terminal speed. These shocks generate hot plasma, a source of X-rays. In the last decade, several developments took place, notably the determination of the hot plasma properties for a large sample of objects using XMM-Newton and Chandra, as well as fully self-consistent MHD modelling and the identification of shock retreat effects in weak winds. Despite a few exceptions, the combination of magnetic confinement, shock retreat and rotation effects seems to be able to account for X-ray emission in massive OB stars. Here we review these new observational and theoretical aspects of this X-ray emission and envisage some perspectives for the next generation of X-ray observatories.