arXiv subjects

S. J. Arthur

Publications and source records attributed to S. J. Arthur.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Photoionization modelling of circumstellar nebulae using irregular grains

We study the effects of using the optical properties of irregular hexahedral grains in photoionization models of circumstellar nebulae around evolved stars. Dust opacities for the irregular grains were obtained from the scattering properties available in the TAMUdust2020 database and these were implemented in the spectral synthesis code cloudy. A sample of photoionization models that use opacities from both spherical and irregular hexahedral grains across a standard MRN size distribution (0.005 to 0.25 um) was produced. We consider the optical properties of graphite, amorphous carbon and silicate dust grains and find that differences between the model nebula continua calculated using spherical and irregular dust grains increase with the grain size, especially for graphite. In particular, we find that the luminosities at the infrared peak for the hexahedral grain models can be up to 60% higher than those from the equivalent spherical grain models for the largest grains. This result suggests that traditional spherical grain assumptions may lead to an overestimate of the dust mass in photoionized nebulae.

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arXiv2021

Dust in RCW 58: clues to common envelope channel formation?

We present a characterization of the dust in the Wolf-Rayet (WR) nebula RCW 58 around the WN8h star WR 40 using archival infrared (IR) observations from WISE and Herschel and radio observations from ATCA. We selected two clumps, free from contamination from material along the line of sight and located towards southern regions in RCW 58, as representative of the general properties of this WR nebula. Their optical, IR and radio properties are then modelled using the photoionization code Cloudy, which calculates a self-consistent spatial distribution of dust and gas properties. Two populations of dust grains are required to model the IR SED: a population of small grains with sizes 0.002-0.01 $μ$m, which is found throughout the clumps, and a population of large grains, with sizes up to 0.9 $μ$m, located further from the star. Moreover, the clumps have very high dust-to-gas ratios, which present a challenge for their origin. Our model supports the hypothesis that RCW 58 is distributed in a ring-like structure rather than a shell, and we estimate a mass of $\sim$2.5 M$_\odot$. This suggests that the mass of the progenitor of WR 40 was about $\approx40^{+2}_{-3}$ M$_\odot$. The ring morphology, low nebular mass, large dust grain size and high dust-to-gas ratio lead us to propose that RCW 58 has formed through a common envelope channel, similar to what has been proposed for M 1-67.

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arXiv2020

Wolf-Rayet stars in the Antennae unveiled by MUSE

We present the analysis of archival Very Large Telescope (VLT) Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) observations of the interacting galaxies NGC 4038/39 (a.k.a. the Antennae) at a distance of 18.1 Mpc. Up to 38 young star-forming complexes with evident contribution from Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars are unveiled. We use publicly available templates of Galactic WR stars in conjunction with available photometric extinction measurements to quantify and classify the WR population in each star-forming region, on the basis of its nearly Solar oxygen abundance. The total estimated number of WR stars in the Antennae is 4053 $\pm$ 84, of which there are 2021 $\pm$ 60 WNL and 2032 $\pm$ 59 WC-types. Our analysis suggests a global WC to WN-type ratio of 1.01 $\pm$ 0.04, which is consistent with the predictions of the single star evolutionary scenario in the most recent BPASS stellar population synthesis models.

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arXiv2020

Dust in the Wolf-Rayet Nebula M1-67

The Wolf-Rayet nebula M1-67 around WR124 is located above the Galactic plane in a region mostly empty of interstellar medium, which makes it the perfect target to study the mass-loss episodes associated with the late stages of massive star evolution. Archive photometric observations from WISE, Spitzer (MIPS) and Herschel (PACS and SPIRE) are used to construct the spectral energy distribution (SED) of the nebula in the wavelength range of 12-500$μ$m. The infrared (photometric and spectroscopic) data and nebular optical data from the literature are modeled simultaneously using the spectral synthesis code Cloudy, where the free parameters are the gas density distribution and the dust grain size distribution. The infrared SED can be reproduced by dust grains with two size distributions: a MRN power-law distribution with grain sizes between 0.005 and 0.05$μ$m and a population of large grains with representative size 0.9$ μ$m. The latter points towards an eruptive origin for the formation of M1-67. The model predicts a nebular ionized gas mass of $M_\mathrm{ion} = 9.2^{+1.6}_{-1.5}~\mathrm{M}_\odot$ and the estimated mass-loss rate during the dust-formation period is $\dot{M} \approx 6 \times 10^{-4} \mathrm{M}_\odot$yr$^{-1}$. We discuss the implications of our results in the context of single and binary stellar evolution and propose that M1-67 represents the best candidate for a post-common envelope scenario in massive stars.

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arXiv2019

Bow shocks, bow waves, and dust waves. IV. Shell shape statistics

Stellar bow shocks result from relative motions between stars and their environment. The interaction of the stellar wind and radiation with gas and dust in the interstellar medium produces curved arcs of emission at optical, infrared, and radio wavelengths. We recently proposed a new two-dimensional classification scheme for the shape of such bow shocks, which we here apply to three very different observational datasets: mid-infrared arcs around hot OB stars; far-infrared arcs around luminous cool stars; and H alpha emission-line arcs around proplyds and other young stars in the Orion Nebula. For OB stars, the average shape is consistent with simple thin-shell models for the interaction of a spherical wind with a parallel stream, but the diversity of observed shapes is many times larger than such models predict. We propose that this may be caused by time-dependent oscillations in the bow shocks, due to either instabilities or wind variability. Cool star bow shocks have markedly more closed wings than hot star bow shocks, which may be due to the dust emission arising in the shocked stellar wind instead of the shocked interstellar medium. The Orion Nebula arcs, on the other hand, have both significantly more open wings and significantly flatter apexes than the hot star bow shocks. We test several possible explanations for this difference (divergent ambient stream, low Mach number, observational biases, and influence of collimated jets), but the evidence for each is inconclusive.

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arXiv2019

Bow shocks, bow waves, and dust waves. I. Strong coupling limit

Dust waves and bow waves result from the action of a star's radiation pressure on a stream of dusty plasma that flows past it. They are an alternative mechanism to hydrodynamic bow shocks for explaining the curved arcs of infrared emission seen around some stars. When gas and grains are perfectly coupled, for a broad class of stellar parameters, wind-supported bow shocks predominate when the ambient density is below 100 per cubic cm. At higher densities radiation-supported bows can form, tending to be optically thin bow waves around B stars, or optically thick bow shocks around early O stars. For OB stars with particularly weak stellar winds, radiation-supported bows become more prevalent.

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arXiv2019

Bow shocks, bow waves, and dust waves. II. Beyond the rip point

Dust waves are a result of gas-grain decoupling in a stream of dusty plasma that flows past a luminous star. The radiation field is sufficiently strong to overcome the collisional coupling between grains and gas at a "rip-point", where the ratio of radiation pressure to gas pressure exceeds a critical value of roughly 1000. When the rip point occurs outside the hydrodynamic bow shock, a separate dust wave may form, decoupled from the gas shell, which can either be drag-confined or inertia-confined, depending on the stream density and relative velocity. In the drag-confined case, there is a minimum stream velocity of roughly 60 km/s that allows a steady-state stagnant drift solution for the dust wave apex. For lower relative velocities, the dust dynamics close to the axis exhibit a limit cycle behavior (rip and snap back) between two different radii. Strong coupling of charged grains to the plasma's magnetic field can modify these effects, but for a quasi-parallel field orientation the results are qualitatively similar to the non-magnetic case. For a quasi-perpendicular field, on the other hand, the formation of a decoupled dust wave is strongly suppressed.

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arXiv2019

Bow shocks, bow waves, and dust waves. III. Diagnostics

Stellar bow shocks, bow waves, and dust waves all result from the action of a star's wind and radiation pressure on a stream of dusty plasma that flows past it. The dust in these bows emits prominently at mid-infrared wavelengths in the range 8 to 60 micron. We propose a novel diagnostic method, the tau-eta diagram, for analyzing these bows, which is based on comparing the fractions of stellar radiative energy and stellar radiative momentum that is trapped by the bow shell. This diagram allows the discrimination of wind-supported bow shocks, radiation-supported bow waves, and dust waves in which grains decouple from the gas. For the wind-supported bow shocks, it allows the stellar wind mass-loss rate to be determined. We critically compare our method with a previous method that has been proposed for determining wind mass-loss rates from bow shock observations. This comparison points to ways in which both methods can be improved and suggests a downward revision by a factor of two with respect to previously reported mass-loss rates. From a sample of 23 mid-infrared bow-shaped sources, we identify at least 4 strong candidates for radiation-supported bow waves, which need to be confirmed by more detailed studies, but no strong candidates for dust waves.

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arXiv2018

On the X-ray temperature of hot gas in diffuse nebulae

X-ray emitting diffuse nebulae around hot stars are observed to have soft-band temperatures in the narrow range [1-3]$\times10^{6}$ K, independent of the stellar wind parameters and the evolutionary stage of the central star. We discuss the origin of this X-ray temperature for planetary nebulae (PNe), Wolf-Rayet nebulae (WR) and interstellar wind bubbles around hot young stars in our Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds. We calculate the differential emission measure (DEM) distributions as a function of temperature from previously published simulations and combine these with the X-ray emission coefficient for the 0.3-2.0 keV band to estimate the X-ray temperatures. We find that all simulated nebulae have DEM distributions with steep negative slopes, which is due to turbulent mixing at the interface between the hot shocked stellar wind and the warm photoionised gas. Sharply peaked emission coefficients act as temperature filters and emphasize the contribution of gas with temperatures close to the peak position, which coincides with the observed X-ray temperatures for the chemical abundance sets we consider. Higher metallicity nebulae have lower temperature and higher luminosity X-ray emission. We show that the second temperature component found from spectral fitting to X-ray observations of WR nebulae is due to a significant contribution from the hot shocked stellar wind, while the lower temperature principal component is dominated by nebular gas. We suggest that turbulent mixing layers are the origin of the soft X-ray emission in the majority of diffuse nebulae.

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arXiv2016

Formation and X-ray Emission from Hot Bubbles in Planetary Nebulae. II. Hot bubble X-ray emission

We present a study of the X-ray emission from numerical simulations of hot bubbles in planetary nebulae (PNe). High-resolution, two-dimensional, radiation-hydrodynamical simulations of the formation and evolution of hot bubbles in PNe, with and without thermal conduction, are used to calculate the X-ray emission and study its time-dependence and relationship to the changing stellar parameters. Instabilities in the wind-wind interaction zone produce clumps and filaments in the swept-up shell of nebular material. Turbulent mixing and thermal conduction at the corrugated interface can produce quantities of intermediate temperature and density gas between the hot, shocked wind bubble and the swept-up photoionized nebular material, which can emit in soft, diffuse X-rays. We use the CHIANTI software to compute synthetic spectra for the models and calculate their luminosities. We find that models both with conduction and those without can produce the X-ray temperatures and luminosities that are in the ranges reported in observations, although the models including thermal conduction are an order of magnitude more luminous than those without. Our results show that at early times the diffuse X-ray emission should be dominated by the contribution from the hot, shocked stellar wind, whereas at later times the nebular gas will dominate the spectrum. We analyse the effect of sampling on the resultant spectra and conclude that a minimum of 200 counts is required to reliably reproduce the spectral shape. Likewise, heavily smoothed surface-brightness profiles obtained from low-count detections of PNe do not provide a reliable description of the spatial distribution of the X-ray emitting gas.

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arXiv2016

Turbulence in the Ionized Gas of the Orion Nebula

In order to study the nature, origin, and impact of turbulent velocity fluctuations in the ionized gas of the Orion Nebula, we apply a variety of statistical techniques to observed velocity cubes. The cubes are derived from high resolving power ($R \approx 40,000$) longslit spectroscopy of optical emission lines that span a range of ionizations. From Velocity Channel Analysis (VCA), we find that the slope of the velocity power spectrum is consistent with predictions of Kolmogorov theory between scales of 8 and 22 arcsec (0.02 to 0.05 pc). The outer scale, which is the dominant scale of density fluctuations in the nebula, approximately coincides with the autocorrelation length of the velocity fluctuations that we determine from the second order velocity structure function. We propose that this is the principal driving scale of the turbulence, which originates in the autocorrelation length of dense cores in the Orion molecular filament. By combining analysis of the non-thermal line widths with the systematic trends of velocity centroid versus ionization, we find that the global champagne flow and smaller scale turbulence each contribute in equal measure to the total velocity dispersion, with respective root-mean-square widths of 4-5 km/s. The turbulence is subsonic and can account for only one half of the derived variance in ionized density, with the remaining variance provided by density gradients in photoevaporation flows from globules and filaments. Intercomparison with results from simulations implies that the ionized gas is confined to a thick shell and does not fill the interior of the nebula.

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arXiv2015

X-ray emission from the Wolf-Rayet bubble NGC 6888. II. XMM-Newton EPIC observations

We present deep XMM-Newton EPIC observations of the Wolf-Rayet (WR) bubble NGC6888 around the star WR136. The complete X-ray mapping of the nebula confirms the distribution of the hot gas in three maxima spatially associated with the caps and northwest blowout hinted at by previous Chandra observations. The global X-ray emission is well described by a two-temperature optically thin plasma model $T_1$=1.4$\times$10$^{6}$ K, $T_{2}$=8.2$\times$10$^{6}$ K) with a luminosity of $L_{\mathrm{X}}$=7.8$\times$10$^{33}$ erg s$^{-1}$ in the 0.3--1.5 keV energy range. The rms electron density of the X-ray-emitting gas is estimated to be $n_\mathrm{e}$=0.4 cm$^{-3}$. The high-quality observations presented here reveal spectral variations within different regions in NGC6888, which allowed us for the first time to detect temperature and/or nitrogen abundance inhomogeneities in the hot gas inside a WR nebula. One possible explanation for such spectral variations is that the mixing of material from the outer nebula into the hot bubble is less efficient around the caps than in other nebular regions.

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arXiv2015

Diffuse X-ray Emission within Wolf-Rayet Nebulae

We discuss our most recent findings on the diffuse X-ray emission from Wolf-Rayet (WR) nebulae. The best-quality X-ray observations of these objects are those performed by XMM-Newton and Chandra towards S308, NGC2359, and NGC6888. Even though these three WR nebulae might have different formation scenarios, they all share similar characteristics: i) the main plasma temperatures of the X-ray-emitting gas is found to be $T$=[1-2]$\times$10$^{6}$ K, ii) the diffuse X-ray emission is confined inside the [O III] shell, and iii) their X-ray luminosities and electron densities in the 0.3-2.0~keV energy range are $L_\mathrm{X}\approx$10$^{33}$-10$^{34}$~erg~s$^{-1}$ and $n_\mathrm{e}\approx$0.1-1~cm$^{-3}$, respectively. These properties and the nebular-like abundances of the hot gas suggest mixing and/or thermal conduction is taking an important role reducing the temperature of the hot bubble.

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arXiv2015

StarBench: The D-type expansion of an HII region

StarBench is a project focused on benchmarking and validating different star-formation and stellar feedback codes. In this first StarBench paper we perform a comparison study of the D-type expansion of an HII region. The aim of this work is to understand the differences observed between the twelve participating numerical codes against the various analytical expressions examining the D-type phase of HII region expansion. To do this, we propose two well-defined tests which are tackled by 1D and 3D grid- and SPH- based codes. The first test examines the `early phase' D-type scenario during which the mechanical pressure driving the expansion is significantly larger than the thermal pressure of the neutral medium. The second test examines the `late phase' D-type scenario during which the system relaxes to pressure equilibrium with the external medium. Although they are mutually in excellent agreement, all twelve participating codes follow a modified expansion law that deviates significantly from the classical Spitzer solution in both scenarios. We present a semi-empirical formula combining the two different solutions appropriate to both early and late phases that agrees with high-resolution simulations to $\lesssim2\%$. This formula provides a much better benchmark solution for code validation than the Spitzer solution. The present comparison has validated the participating codes and through this project we provide a dataset for calibrating the treatment of ionizing radiation hydrodynamics codes.

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arXiv2014

Turbulence in simulated HII regions

We investigate the scale dependence of fluctuations inside a realistic model of an evolving turbulent HII region and to what extent these may be studied observationally. We find that the multiple scales of energy injection from champagne flows and the photoionization of clumps and filaments leads to a flatter spectrum of fluctuations than would be expected from top-down turbulence driven at the largest scales. The traditional structure function approach to the observational study of velocity fluctuations is shown to be incapable of reliably determining the velocity power spectrum of our simulation. We find that a more promising approach is the Velocity Channel Analysis technique of Lazarian & Pogosyan (2000), which, despite being intrinsically limited by thermal broadening, can successfully recover the logarithmic slope of the velocity power spectrum to a precision of +-0.1 from high resolution optical emission line spectroscopy.

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arXiv2014

Formation and X-ray emission from Hot Bubbles in Planetary Nebulae. I. Hot Bubble formation

We carry out high resolution two-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamic numerical simulations to study the formation and evolution of hot bubbles inside planetary nebulae (PNe). We take into account the evolution of the stellar parameters, wind velocity and mass-loss rate from the final thermal pulses during the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) through to the post-AGB stage for a range of initial stellar masses. The instabilities that form at the interface between the hot bubble and the swept-up AGB wind shell lead to hydrodynamical interactions, photoevaporation flows and opacity variations. We explore the effects of hydrodynamical mixing combined with thermal conduction at this interface on the dynamics, photoionization, and emissivity of our models. We find that even models without thermal conduction mix significant amounts of mass into the hot bubble. When thermal conduction is not included, hot gas can leak through the gaps between clumps and filaments in the broken swept-up AGB shell and this depressurises the bubble. The inclusion of thermal conduction evaporates and heats material from the clumpy shell, which expands to seal the gaps, preventing a loss in bubble pressure. The dynamics of bubbles without conduction is dominated by the thermal pressure of the thick photoionized shell, while for bubbles with thermal conduction it is dominated by the hot, shocked wind.

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arXiv2012

X-ray emission from the Wolf-Rayet bubble S308

The Wolf-Rayet (WR) bubble S 308 around the WR star HD 50896 is one of the only two WR bubbles known to possess X-ray emission. We present XMM-Newton observations of three fields of this WR bubble that, in conjunction with an existing observation of its Northwest quadrant, map most of the nebula. The X-ray emission from S 308 displays a limb-brightened morphology, with a central cavity ~22 arcmin in size and a shell thickness of ~8 arcmin. This X-ray shell is confined by the optical shell of ionized material. The spectrum is dominated by the He-like triplets of NIV at 0.43 keV and OVII at 0.57 keV, and declines towards high energies, with a faint tail up to 1 keV. This spectrum can be described by a two-temperature optically thin plasma emission model (T1 ~ 1.1x10^6 K, T2 ~ 13x10^6 K), with a total X-ray luminosity ~2x10^33 erg/s at the assumed distance of 1.5 kpc.

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arXiv2011

Radiation-Hydrodynamic Models of the evolving Circumstellar Medium around Massive Stars

We study the evolution of the interstellar and circumstellar media around massive stars (M > 40M_{\odot}) from the main sequence through to the Wolf-Rayet stage by means of radiationhydrodynamic simulations. We use publicly available stellar evolution models to investigate the different possible structures that can form in the stellar wind bubbles around Wolf-Rayet stars. We find significant differences between models with and without stellar rotation, and between models from different authors. More specifically, we find that the main ingredients in the formation of structures in the Wolf-Rayet wind bubbles are the duration of the Red Supergiant (or Luminous Blue Variable) phase, the amount of mass lost, and the wind velocity during this phase, in agreement with previous authors. Thermal conduction is also included in our models. We find that main-sequence bubbles with thermal conduction are slightly smaller, due to extra cooling which reduces the pressure in the hot, shocked bubble, but that thermal conduction does not appear to significantly influence the formation of structures in post-main-sequence bubbles. Finally, we study the predicted X-ray emission from the models and compare our results with observations of the Wolf-Rayet bubbles S\,308, NGC\,6888, and RCW\,58. We find that bubbles composed primarily of clumps have reduced X-ray luminosity and very soft spectra, while bubbles with shells correspond more closely to observations.

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