Non-Thermal Emission from Early-Type Binaries

Abstract

The powerful wind-wind collision in massive star binaries creates a region of high temperature plasma and accelerates particles to relativistic energies. I briefly summarize the hydrodynamics of the wind-wind interaction and the observational evidence, including recent γ-ray detections, of non-thermal emission from such systems. I then discuss existing models of the non-thermal emission and their application to date, before concluding with some future prospects.