The interplay between mass-loss and binarity

TL;DR

This review explores how stellar winds and binarity interact, influencing stellar evolution and outflows, and highlights how their interplay provides new insights into mass loss and evolutionary stages of stars.

Contribution

It synthesizes current understanding of the interplay between stellar winds and binarity, emphasizing their combined impact on stellar evolution and observational signatures.

Findings

Binarity shapes stellar outflows and mass loss signatures.

Spectral signatures of winds help identify evolutionary stages.

Multiplicity properties inform evolutionary connections between stars.

Abstract

Most stars with birth masses larger than that of our Sun belong to binary or higher order multiple systems. Similarly, most stars have stellar winds. Radiation pressure and multiplicity create outflows of material that remove mass from the primary star and inject it into the interstellar medium or transfer it to a companion. Both have strong impact on the subsequent evolution of the stars, yet they are often studied separately. In this short review, I will sketch part of the landscape of the interplay between stellar winds and binarity. I will present several examples where binarity shapes the stellar outflows, providing new opportunities to understand and measure mass loss properties. Stellar winds spectral signatures often help clearly identifying key stages of stellar evolution. The multiplicity properties of these stages then shed a new light onto evolutionary connections between the different categories of evolved stars.