Recent developments in determining the evolution of magnetic OB stars

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent progress in understanding the evolution of magnetic OB stars, focusing on spectropolarimetric surveys, detection limits, and the impact of magnetic fields on stellar evolution models.

Contribution

It highlights the characteristics of the MiMeS survey, discusses the need for new high-precision surveys, and reviews updated evolution models including magnetic effects.

Findings

Current surveys have detection limits that restrict understanding of older O-type stars.

Magnetic fields can significantly alter stellar evolutionary tracks.

New models incorporate magnetic wind quenching and convection suppression.

Abstract

We review recent developments in determining the evolution of magnetic massive OB stars. One of the important scientific questions is the completeness and the detection limits of contemporaneous spectropolarimetric surveys across the HR diagram. We present the characteristics of the MiMeS survey of O-type stars, and how the limits of the current available observations warrant the design of new high-precision surveys that target the older O-type star population. Another important question is whether the presence of the magnetic fields changes stellar evolutionary tracks in a significant way, hence leading to a wrong determination of stellar parameters. We review new evolution models that include the effect of magnetic wind quenching, and suppression of convection in the iron opacity peak zone.