AAS 204th Meeting, June 2004
Session 21 Moon, Mercury, Vesta and Late Stellar Evolutio
Oral, Monday, May 31, 2004, 10:00-11:30am, 610/612

[Previous] | [Session 21] | [Next]


[21.04] Nongrayness Effects in Wolf-Rayet Wind Momentum Deposition

A.J. Onifer, K.G. Gayley (Univ. of Iowa)

Wolf-Rayet winds are characterized by their large momentum fluxes and optically thick winds. A simple analytic approach that helps to understand the most critical processes is the effecively gray approximation, but this has not been generalized to more realistic nongray opacities. We have developed a simplified theory for describing the interaction of the stellar flux with nongray wind opacity. We replace the detailed line list with a set of statistical parameters that are sensitive to the line strengths as well as the wavelength distribution of lines. We determine these statistical parameters for several real line lists, exploring the effects of temperature and density changes on the efficiency of momentum driving relative to gray opacity. We wish to acknowledge NSF grant AST-0098155.


[Previous] | [Session 21] | [Next]

Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 #2
© YEAR. The American Astronomical Soceity.