3D hydrodynamical and radiative transfer modeling of Eta Carinae's colliding winds

TL;DR

This paper combines 3D hydrodynamical and radiative transfer simulations to model Eta Carinae's colliding winds, providing detailed ionization data and new visualization methods, with broader applicability to similar binary systems.

Contribution

It introduces a novel integration of 3D hydrodynamics with radiative transfer using SimpleX on SPH simulations, enhancing analysis of stellar wind interactions.

Findings

Detailed 3D ionization fractions of hydrogen and helium.

New visualization and interaction techniques for complex 3D simulation data.

Potential application to various other colliding wind binary systems.

Abstract

We present results of full 3D hydrodynamical and radiative transfer simulations of the colliding stellar winds in the massive binary system Eta Carinae. We accomplish this by applying the SimpleX algorithm for 3D radiative transfer on an unstructured Voronoi-Delaunay grid to recent 3D smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations of the binary colliding winds. We use SimpleX to obtain detailed ionization fractions of hydrogen and helium, in 3D, at the resolution of the original SPH simulations. We investigate several computational domain sizes and Luminous Blue Variable primary star mass-loss rates. We furthermore present new methods of visualizing and interacting with output from complex 3D numerical simulations, including 3D interactive graphics and 3D printing. While we initially focus on Eta Car, the methods employed can be applied to numerous other colliding wind (WR 140, WR 137, WR 19) and dusty 'pinwheel' (WR 104, WR 98a) binary systems. Coupled with 3D hydrodynamical simulations, SimpleX simulations have the potential to help determine the regions where various observed time-variable emission and absorption lines form in these unique objects.