TY  - JOUR
A1  - Shenar, Tomer
A1  - Hamann, Wolf-Rainer
A1  - Todt, Helge Tobias
T1  - The impact of rotation on the line profiles of Wolf-Rayet stars
JF  - Astronomy and astrophysics : an international weekly journal
N2  - Context. Massive Wolf-Rayet stars are recognized today to be in a very common, but short, evolutionary phase of massive stars. While our understanding of Wolf-Rayet stars has increased dramatically over the past decades, it remains unclear whether rapid rotators are among them. There are various indications that rapidly rotating Wolf-Rayet stars should exist. Unfortunately, due to their expanding atmospheres, rotational velocities of Wolf-Rayet stars are very difficult to measure. However, recently observed spectra of several Wolf-Rayet stars reveal peculiarly broad and round emission lines. Could these spectra imply rapid rotation?
 Aims. In this work, we model the effects of rotation on the atmospheres of Wolf-Rayet stars. We further investigate whether the peculiar spectra of five Wolf-Rayet stars may be explained with the help of stellar rotation, infer appropriate rotation parameters, and discuss the implications of our results.
 Methods. We make use of the Potsdam Wolf-Rayet (PoWR) non-LTE model atmosphere code. Since the observed spectra of WolfRayet stars are mainly formed in their expanding atmospheres, rotation must be accounted for with a 3D integration scheme of the formal integral. For this purpose, we assume a rotational velocity field consisting of an inner co-rotating domain and an outer domain, where the angular momentum is conserved.
 Results. We find that rotation can reproduce the unique spectra analyzed here. However, the inferred rotational velocities at the stellar surface are large (similar to 200 km s(-1)), and the inferred co-rotation radii (similar to 10R.) suggest the existence of very strong photospheric magnetic fields (similar to 20 kG).
KW  - stars: Wolf-Rayet
KW  - Magellanic Clouds
KW  - stars: magnetic field
KW  - stars: massive
KW  - gamma-ray burst: general
KW  - stars: rotation
Y1  - 2014
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201322496
SN  - 0004-6361
SN  - 1432-0746
VL  - 562
PB  - EDP Sciences
CY  - Les Ulis
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Gvaramadze, V. V.
A1  - Chene, A.-N.
A1  - Kniazev, A. Y.
A1  - Schnurr, O.
A1  - Shenar, Tomer
A1  - Sander, Andreas Alexander Christoph
A1  - Hainich, Rainer
A1  - Langer, N.
A1  - Hamann, Wolf-Rainer
A1  - Chu, Y.-H.
A1  - Gruendl, R. A.
T1  - Discovery of a new Wolf-Rayet star and a candidate star cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud with Spitzer
JF  - Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
N2  - We report the first-ever discovery of a Wolf-Rayet (WR) star in the Large Magellanic Cloud via detection of a circular shell with the Spitzer Space Telescope. Follow-up observations with Gemini-South resolved the central star of the shell into two components separated from each other by a parts per thousand 2 arcsec (or a parts per thousand 0.5 pc in projection). One of these components turns out to be a WN3 star with H and He lines both in emission and absorption (we named it BAT99 3a using the numbering system based on extending the Breysacher et al. catalogue). Spectroscopy of the second component showed that it is a B0 V star. Subsequent spectroscopic observations of BAT99 3a with the du Pont 2.5-m telescope and the Southern African Large Telescope revealed that it is a close, eccentric binary system, and that the absorption lines are associated with an O companion star. We analysed the spectrum of the binary system using the non-LTE Potsdam WR (powr) code, confirming that the WR component is a very hot (a parts per thousand 90 kK) WN star. For this star, we derived a luminosity of log L/ L-aS (TM) = 5.45 and a mass-loss rate of 10(- 5.8) M-aS (TM) yr(- 1), and found that the stellar wind composition is dominated by helium with 20 per cent of hydrogen. Spectroscopy of the shell revealed an He iii region centred on BAT99 3a and having the same angular radius (a parts per thousand 15 arcsec) as the shell. We thereby add a new example to a rare class of high-excitation nebulae photoionized by WR stars. Analysis of the nebular spectrum showed that the shell is composed of unprocessed material, implying that the shell was swept-up from the local interstellar medium. We discuss the physical relationship between the newly identified massive stars and their possible membership of a previously unrecognized star cluster.
KW  - line: identification
KW  - binaries: spectroscopic
KW  - stars: massive
KW  - stars: Wolf-Rayet
KW  - ISM: bubbles
Y1  - 2014
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stu909
SN  - 0035-8711
SN  - 1365-2966
VL  - 442
IS  - 2
SP  - 929
EP  - 945
PB  - Oxford Univ. Press
CY  - Oxford
ER  -