Effect of rotational mixing and metallicity on the hot star wind mass-loss rates^⋆

¹ Ústav teoretické fyziky a astrofyziky, Masarykova univerzita, Kotlářská 2, 611 37 Brno, Czech Republic
² Astronomický ústav, Akademie věd České republiky, 251 65 Ondřejov, Czech Republic

Received: 19 March 2014
Accepted: 26 May 2014

Abstract

Hot star wind mass-loss rates depend on the abundance of individual elements. This dependence is usually accounted for assuming scaled solar chemical composition. However, this approach may not be justified in evolved rotating stars. The rotational mixing brings CNO-processed material to the stellar surface, increasing the abundance of nitrogen at the expense of carbon and oxygen, which potentially influences the mass-loss rates. We study the influence of the modified chemical composition resulting from the rotational mixing on the wind parameters, particularly the wind mass-loss rates. We use our non-local thermodynamic equilibrium wind code to predict the wind structure and compare the calculated wind mass-loss rate for the case of scaled solar chemical composition and the composition affected by the CNO cycle. We show that for a higher mass-fraction of heavier elements Z/Z_⊙ ≳ 0.1 the change of chemical composition from the scaled solar to the CNO-processed scaled solar composition does not significantly affect the wind mass-loss rates. The missing line force caused by carbon and oxygen is compensated for by nitrogen line force. However, for a very low-mass fraction of heavier elements Z/Z_⊙ ≲ 0.1 the rotational mixing significantly affects the wind mass-loss rates. Moreover, the decrease of the mass-loss rate with metallicity is stronger at such low metallicities. We study the relevance of the wind momentum–luminosity relationship for different metallicities and show that for a metallicity Z/Z_⊙ ≲ 0.1 the relationship displays a large scatter, which depreciates the use of this relationship at the lowest metallicities.