Implications of the metallicity dependence of wolf-rayet winds
Mar, 2006Citations per year
Abstract: (arXiv)
Aims: Recent theoretical predictions for the winds of Wolf-Rayet stars indicate that their mass-loss rates scale with the initial stellar metallicity in the local Universe.We aim to investigate how this predicted dependence affects the models of Wolf-Rayet stars and their progeny in different chemical environments. Methods: We compute models of stellar structure and evolution for Wolf-Rayet stars for different initial metallicities, and investigate how the scaling of the Wolf-Rayet mass-loss rates affects the final masses, the lifetimes of the WN and WC subtypes, and how the ratio of the two populations vary with metallicity. Results: We find significant effects of metallicity dependent mass-loss rates for Wolf-Rayet stars. For models that include the scaling of the mass-loss rate with initial metallicity, all WR stars become neutron stars rather than black holes at twice the solar metallicity: at lower , black holes have larger masses. We also show that our models that include the mass-loss metallicity scaling closely reproduce the observed decrease of the relative population of WC over WN stars at low metallicities.- STARS EVOLUTION
- STARS MASS-LOSS
- STARS EARLY-TYPE
- STARS WINDS
- STARS OUTFLOWS
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