Probing stellar winds and accretion physics in high-mass X-ray binaries and ultra-luminous X-ray sources with LOFT

This is a White Paper in support of the mission concept of the Large Observatory for X-ray Timing (LOFT), proposed as a medium-sized ESA mission. We discuss the potential of LOFT for the study of high-mass X-ray binaries and ultra-luminous X-ray sources. For a summary, we refer to the paper.