No Arabic abstract
Radiative pressure exerted by line interactions is a prominent driver of outflows in astrophysical systems, being at work in the outflows emerging from hot stars or from the accretion discs of cataclysmic variables, massive young stars and active galactic nuclei. In this work, a new radiation hydrodynamical approach to model line-driven hot-star winds is presented. By coupling a Monte Carlo radiative transfer scheme with a finite-volume fluid dynamical method, line-driven mass outflows may be modelled self-consistently, benefiting from the advantages of Monte Carlo techniques in treating multi-line effects, such as multiple scatterings, and in dealing with arbitrary multidimensional configurations. In this work, we introduce our approach in detail by highlighting the key numerical techniques and verifying their operation in a number of simplified applications, specifically in a series of self-consistent, one-dimensional, Sobolev-type, hot-star wind calculations. The utility and accuracy of our approach is demonstrated by comparing the obtained results with the predictions of various formulations of the so-called CAK theory and by confronting the calculations with modern sophisticated techniques of predicting the wind structure. Using these calculations, we also point out some useful diagnostic capabilities our approach provides. Finally we discuss some of the current limitations of our method, some possible extensions and potential future applications.
Massive stars present strong stellar that which are described by the radiation driven wind theory. Accurate mass-loss rates are necessary to properly describe the stellar evolution across the Hertzsprung--Russel Diagram. We present a self-consistent procedure that coupled the hydrodynamics with calculations of the line-force, giving as results the line-force parameters, the velocity field, and the mass-loss rate. Our calculations contemplate the contribution to the line-force multiplier from more than $sim 900,000$ atomic transitions, an NLTE radiation flux from the photosphere and a quasi-LTE approximation for the occupational numbers. A full set of line-force parameters for $T_text{eff}ge 32,000$ K, surface gravities higher than 3.4 dex for two different metallicities are presented, with their corresponding wind parameters (terminal velocities and mass-loss rates). The already known dependence of line-force parameters on effective temperature is enhanced by the dependence on $log g$. The terminal velocities present a stepper scaling relation with respect to the escape velocity, this might explain the scatter values observed in the hot side of the bistability jump. Moreover, a comparison of self-consistent mass-loss rates with empirical values shows a good agreement. Self-consistent wind solutions are used as input in FASTWIND to calculate synthetic spectra. We show, comparing with the observed spectra for three stars, that varying the clumping factor, the synthetic spectra rapidly converge into the neighbourhood region of the solution. It is important to stress that our self-consistent procedure significantly reduces the number of free parameters needed to obtain a synthetic spectrum.
Growth of the black holes (BHs) from the seeds to supermassive BHs (SMBHs, $sim!10^9,M_odot$) is not understood, but the mass accretion must have played an important role. We performed two-dimensional radiation hydrodynamics simulations of line-driven disc winds considering the metallicity dependence in a wide range of the BH mass, and investigated the reduction of the mass accretion rate due to the wind mass loss. Our results show that denser and faster disc winds appear at higher metallicities and larger BH masses. The accretion rate is suppressed to $sim! 0.4$--$0.6$ times the mass supply rate to the disc for the BH mass of $M_{rm BH}gtrsim 10^5,M_{odot}$ in high-metallicity environments of $Zgtrsim Z_odot$, while the wind mass loss is negligible when the metallicity is sub-solar ($sim 0.1Z_odot$). By developing a semi-analytical model, we found that the metallicity dependence of the line force and the BH mass dependence of the surface area of the wind launch region are the cause of the metallicity dependence ($propto! Z^{2/3}$) and BH mass dependencies ($propto! M_{rm BH}^{4/3}$ for $M_{rm BH}leq 10^6,M_odot$ and $propto! M_{rm BH}$ for $M_{rm BH}geq 10^6,M_odot$) of the mass-loss rate. Our model suggests that the growth of BHs by the gas accretion effectively slows down in the regime $gtrsim 10^{5}M_odot$ in metal-enriched environments $gtrsim Z_odot$. This means that the line-driven disc winds may have an impact on late evolution of SMBHs.
We present Arepo-MCRT, a novel Monte Carlo radiative transfer (MCRT) radiation-hydrodynamics (RHD) solver for the unstructured moving-mesh code Arepo. Our method is designed for general multiple scattering problems in both optically thin and thick conditions. We incorporate numerous efficiency improvements and noise reduction schemes to help overcome efficiency barriers that typically inhibit convergence. These include continuous absorption and energy deposition, photon weighting and luminosity boosting, local packet merging and splitting, path-based statistical estimators, conservative (face-centered) momentum coupling, adaptive convergence between time steps, implicit Monte Carlo algorithms for thermal emission, and discrete-diffusion Monte Carlo techniques for unresolved scattering, including a novel advection scheme. We primarily focus on the unique aspects of our implementation and discussions of the advantages and drawbacks of our methods in various astrophysical contexts. Finally, we consider several test applications including the levitation of an optically thick layer of gas by trapped infrared radiation. We find that the initial acceleration phase and revitalized second wind are connected via self-regulation of the RHD coupling, such that the RHD method accuracy and simulation resolution each leave important imprints on the long-term behavior of the gas.
We present two self-consistent procedures that couple the hydrodynamics with calculations of the line-force in the frame of radiation wind theory. These procedures give us the line-force parameters, the velocity field, and the mass-loss rate. The first one is based on the so-called m-CAK theory. A full set of line-force parameters for $T_text{eff}ge 32,000$ K and surface gravities higher than 3.4 dex for two different metallicities are presented, along with their corresponding wind parameters. We find that the dependence of line-force parameters on effective temperature is enhanced by the dependence on $log g$. For the case of homogeneous winds (without clumping) comparison of self-consistent mass-loss rates shows a good agreement with empirical values. We also consider self-consistent wind solutions that are used as input in FASTWIND to calculate synthetic spectra. By comparison with the observed spectra for three stars with clumped winds, we found that varying the clumping factor the synthetic spectra rapidly converge into the neighbourhood region of the solution. Therefore, this self-consistent m-CAK procedure significantly reduces the number of free parameters needed to obtain a synthetic spectrum. The second procedure (called Lambert-procedure) provides a self-consistent solution beyond m-CAK theory, and line-acceleration is calculated by the full NLTE radiative transfer code CMFGEN. Both the mass-loss rate and the clumping factor are set as free parameters, hence their values are obtained by spectral fitting after the respective self-consistent hydrodynamics is calculated. Since performing the Lambert-procedure requires significant computational power, the analysis is made only for the star z-Puppis. The promising results gives a positive balance about the future applications for the self-consistent solutions presented on this thesis.
We present the public Monte Carlo photoionization and moving-mesh radiation hydrodynamics code CMacIonize, which can be used to simulate the self-consistent evolution of HII regions surrounding young O and B stars, or other sources of ionizing radiation. The code combines a Monte Carlo photoionization algorithm that uses a complex mix of hydrogen, helium and several coolants in order to self-consistently solve for the ionization and temperature balance at any given type, with a standard first order hydrodynamics scheme. The code can be run as a post-processing tool to get the line emission from an existing simulation snapshot, but can also be used to run full radiation hydrodynamical simulations. Both the radiation transfer and the hydrodynamics are implemented in a general way that is independent of the grid structure that is used to discretize the system, allowing it to be run both as a standard fixed grid code, but also as a moving-mesh code.