Stellar winds driven by super-Eddington luminosities

Abstract

The authors constructed over 100 models of a steady-state, spherically symmetric outflow of gas from a star of 1.4 M_sun; with a pure helium envelope and a luminosity somewhat exceeding the Eddington limit. Super-Eddington luminosities were made possible by the decrease of the electron-scattering opacity at the high temperature at which accreted helium burns on neutron stars. The authors explored a large region in the mass-loss rate (M) - energy-loss rate (E) diagram, and they found self-consistent models for 1.01 < 1.11, and for 16.5 < log M< 19.5 (in grams per second). The models have photospheric radii much larger than neutron star radii, and they are faint in the X-ray region of the spectrum. Applications to sources of X-ray bursts with precursors are discussed.