Radiation-driven winds of hot luminous stars. XVIII. The reliability of stellar and wind parameter determinations from spectral analysis of selected central stars of planetary nebulae and the possibility of single-star SN Ia progenitors

TL;DR

This study assesses the reliability of spectral analysis methods for determining stellar and wind parameters of hot luminous stars, confirming the similarity of CSPN and massive O star winds and exploring their potential as single-star Type Ia supernova progenitors.

Contribution

It demonstrates that consistent wind and stellar parameters can be derived from spectral analysis, validating the use of radiation-driven wind models for CSPNs and their potential as supernova progenitors.

Findings

Optical and UV analyses discrepancies are due to inconsistent parameter assumptions.

Moderate clumping factors have minimal impact on UV spectra and ionization balance.

CSPN and massive O star winds show similar properties, supporting their evolutionary connection.

Abstract

Context. The uncertainty in the degree to which radiation-driven winds of hot stars might be affected by small inhomogeneities in the density leads to a corresponding uncertainty in the determination of the atmospheric mass loss rates from the strength of optical recombination lines. Furthermore, the optical recombination lines also react sensitively to even small changes in the density structure resulting from the (often assumed instead of computed) velocity law of the outflow. This raises the question of how reliable the parameter determinations from such lines are. Results. The discrepancy between the optical and the UV analyses is confirmed to be the result of a missing consistency between stellar and wind parameters in the optical analysis. The influence of the density (velocity field) is of the same order as that of moderate clumping factors. Moderate clumping factors leave the UV spectra mostly unaffected, indicating that the influence on the ionization balance, and thus on the radiative acceleration, is small. Instead of the erratic behavior of the clumping factors claimed from the optical analyses, our analysis based on the velocity field computed from radiative driving yields similar clumping factors for all CSPNs. The shock temperatures and the ratios of X-ray to bolometric luminosity required to reproduce the highly ionized Ovi line agree with those known from massive O stars, again confirming the similarity of O-type CSPN and massive O star atmospheres. Conclusions. The similarity of the winds of O-type CSPNs and those of massive O stars justifies using the same methods based on the dynamics of radiation-driven winds in their analysis, thus supporting the earlier result that several of the CSPNs in the sample have near-Chandrasekhar-limit masses and may thus be possible single-star progenitors of type Ia supernovae.