Astrophysics and Astronomy Commons^™

Wind Channeling, Magnetospheres, And Spindown Of Magnetic Massive Stars, S. P. Owocki, A. Ud-Doula, R. H. D. Townsend, V. Petit, J. O. Sundqvist, David H. Cohen

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Works

A subpopulation (~10%) of hot, luminous, massive stars have been revealed through spectropolarimetry to harbor strong (hundreds to tens of thousand Gauss), steady, large-scale (often significantly dipolar) magnetic fields. This review focuses on the role of such fields in channeling and trapping the radiatively driven wind of massive stars, including both in the strongly perturbed outflow from open field regions, and the wind-fed “magnetospheres” that develop from closed magnetic loops. For B-type stars with weak winds and moderately fast rotation, one finds “centrifugal magnetospheres”, in which rotational support allows magnetically trapped wind to accumulate to a large density, with quite …