The incidence of magnetic fields in massive stars: An overview of the MiMeS Survey Component

TL;DR

This paper reviews the MiMeS survey's efforts to detect magnetic fields in massive stars, revealing 14 new magnetic stars and highlighting the limited understanding of magnetic influence on stellar evolution.

Contribution

It provides an overview of the MiMeS survey's methodology and results, expanding the known population of magnetic massive stars and addressing gaps in current knowledge.

Findings

Detected 14 new magnetic massive stars

Collected over 550 spectropolarimetric observations

Enhanced understanding of magnetic field incidence in massive stars

Abstract

With only a handful of known magnetic massive stars, there is a troubling deficit in the scope of our knowledge of the influence of magnetic fields on stellar evolution, and almost no empirical basis for understanding how fields modify mass loss and rotation in massive stars. Most remarkably, there is still no solid consensus regarding the origin physics of these fields - whether they are fossil remnants, or produced by contemporaneous dynamos, or some combination of these mechanisms. This article will present an overview of the Survey Component of the MiMeS Large Programs, the primary goal of which is to search for Zeeman signatures in the circular polarimetry of massive stars (stars with spectral types B3 and hotter) that were previously unknown to host any magnetic field. To date, the MiMeS collaboration has collected more than 550 high-resolution spectropolarimetric observations with ESPaDOnS and Narval of nearly 170 different stars, from which we have detected 14 new magnetic stars.