Wolf-Rayet star evolution with clumpy envelope structure

  • Published : 2016.04.12

Abstract

It is well known that theoretical models of Wolf-Rayet stars are not consistent with observational data in terms of temperature and stellar radius. Recent study in analytical and numerical simulations show the importance of density inhomogeneity in stellar envelope. Using 1-dimensional numerical simulations, we study how such clumpiness arisen over convective surface of Wolf-Rayet stars affect their evolutionary path. Starting from pure helium star models, we constructed 21 different initial conditions by varying stellar mass, metallicity, and the clumpiness of the sub-surface convection zone. We run the simulations until the oxygen-burning is reached and find that the influence of the clumpiness is sensitive to the initial metallicity. Our models with high metallicity including the effect of the density inhomogeneity can roughly explain the observed properties of Wolf-Rayet stars such as stellar radius and temperature. By contrast, despite a considerable amount of density inhomogeneity is given, low metallicity models could not fully explain observations. To understand the inconsistency in low metallicity models, detailed study with improved model is required, taking account of the error range of the observations.

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