Suppression of photospheric velocity fluctuations in strongly magnetic O-stars in radiation-magnetohydrodynamic simulations

TL;DR

This study uses radiation-magnetohydrodynamic simulations to show that strong magnetic fields in O-stars can suppress photospheric velocity fluctuations, explaining the lack of macroturbulence in certain magnetic O-stars like NGC 1624-2.

Contribution

It demonstrates how magnetic field strength and geometry influence atmospheric turbulence in O-stars, providing a physical explanation for observed line-broadening differences.

Findings

Strong horizontal magnetic fields (>10 kG) suppress velocity fluctuations in O-star atmospheres.

Radial magnetic fields only suppress horizontal motions, leading to radial fluctuations.

Strong magnetic fields can stabilize atmospheres and reduce macroturbulence in magnetic O-stars.

Abstract

O-stars generally show clear signs of strong line-broadening (in addition to rotational broadening) in their photospheric absorption lines (typically referred to as 'macroturbulence'), believed to originate in a turbulent sub-surface zone associated with enhanced opacities due to recombination of iron-group elements (at T~ 150-200 kK). O-stars with detected global magnetic fields also display such macroturbulence; the sole exception to this is NGC 1624-2, which also has the strongest (by far) detected field of the known magnetic O-stars. It has been suggested that this lack of additional line-broadening is because NGC 1624-2's exceptionally strong magnetic field might be able able to suppress the turbulent velocity field generated in the iron opacity peak zone. For moderately strong magnetic cases (~1 kG) the simulated atmospheres are highly structured characterised by large root-mean-square velocities, and our results are qualitatively similar to those found in previous non-magnetic studies. By contrast, we find that a strong horizontal magnetic field in excess of 10 kG can indeed suppress the large velocity fluctuations and thus stabilise (and thereby also inflate) the atmosphere of a typical early O-star in the Galaxy. On the other hand, an equally strong radial field is only able to suppress horizontal motions, and as a consequence these models exhibit significant radial fluctuations. Our simulations provide an overall physical rationale as to why NGC 1624-2 with its strong ~20 kG dipolar field lacks the large macroturbulent line broadening that all other known slowly rotating early O-stars exhibit. However, they also highlight the importance of field geometry for controlling the atmospheric dynamics in massive and luminous stars that are strongly magnetic, tentatively suggesting latitudinal dependence of macroturbulence and basic photospheric parameters.