Theoretical wind clumping predictions from 2D LDI models of O-star winds at different metallicities

TL;DR

This study uses 2D hydrodynamic simulations to predict how wind clumping in O-star stellar winds varies with metallicity, finding a weak decrease in clumping as metallicity increases, which impacts mass-loss rate estimates.

Contribution

It provides the first theoretical prediction of the metallicity dependence of wind clumping in O-star winds using 2D LDI models.

Findings

Wind clumping decreases with metallicity.

Clumping factor scales as Z^(0.15).

Implications for mass-loss rate estimates.

Abstract

Hot, massive (OB) stars experience strong line-driven stellar winds and mass loss. As the majority of efficient driving lines are metallic, the amount of wind driving and mass loss is dependent on the stellar metallicity Z. In addition, line-driven winds are intrinsically inhomogeneous and clumpy. However, to date, neither theoretical nor empirical studies of line-driven winds have investigated how such wind clumping may also depend on Z. We theoretically investigated the degree of wind clumping due to the line-deshadowing instability (LDI) as a function of Z. We performed two-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of the LDI with an assumed one-dimensional radiation line force for a grid of O-star wind models with fixed luminosity, but with different metal contents by varying the accumulative line strength Qbar describing the total ensemble of driving lines. We find that, for this fixed luminosity, the amount of wind clumping decreases with metallicity. The decrease is clearly seen in the statistical properties of our simulations, but is nonetheless rather weak; a simple power-law fit for the dependence of the clumping factor f_cl = <rho^2>/<rho>^2 on metallicity yields f_cl ~ Z^(0.15 +/- 0.01). This implies that empirically derived power-law dependencies of mass-loss rate Mdot on metallicity -- which were previously inferred from spectral diagnostics effectively depending on Mdot*sqrt(f_cl) but without having any constraints on f_cl(Z) -- should be only modestly altered by clumping. We expect that this prediction can be directly tested using new data from the Hubble Space Telescope Ultraviolet Legacy Library of Young Stars as Essential Standards (ULLYSES) project.