Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) is an international journal which publishes papers on all aspects of astronomy and astrophysics

Over the past 40 years, the massive luminous blue variable/Wolf-Rayet system HD 5980 in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) has undergone a long-term S Doradus-type variability cycle and two brief and violent eruptions in 1993 and 1994. In this paper we analyze a collection of UV and optical spectra obtained between 1979 and 2009 and perform CMFGEN model fits to spectra of 1994, 2000, 2002, and 2009. The results are as follows: (1) the long-term S Dor-type variability is associated with changes of the hydrostatic radius; (2) the 1994 eruption involved changes in its bolometric luminosity and wind structure; (3) the emission-line strength, the wind velocity, and the continuum luminosity underwent correlated variations in the sense that a decreasing V _∞ is associated with increasing emission line and continuum levels; and (4) the spectrum of the third star in the system (Star C) is well fit by a T _eff = 32 K model atmosphere with SMC chemical abundances. For all epochs, the wind of the erupting star is optically thick at the sonic point and is thus driven mainly by the continuum opacity. We speculate that the wind switches between two stable regimes driven by the "hot" (during the eruption) and the "cool" (post-eruption) iron opacity bumps as defined by Lamers & Nugis and Gräfener & Hamann, and thus the wind may undergo a bi-stability jump of a different nature from that which occurs in OB stars.

EZ CMa is an apparently unusual Wolf-Rayet star of the nitrogen sequence that exhibits strong variations on a period of 3.77 days with coherency lasting typically about 10 cycles. We have used an extensive set of optical spectroscopic observations to investigate a possible link between its line-profile and photometric continuum variability. Despite the strong epoch dependency of the variations, a persistent correlation is found between changes in the wind line profiles (N V λλ4604, 4620 in particular) and in continuum flux emanating near the stellar core. We suggest that these observations give further support to the idea that the physical conditions prevailing in the vicinity of the star's photosphere have a significant impact on the wind structure and that a spatial dependence of these conditions at the base of the outflow induces the formation of azimuthal wind structures in EZ CMa. The epoch-dependent nature of the variability could be related to long-term behavior of corotating magnetic structures, although pulsational instabilities constitute a viable alternative.

Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) is an international journal which publishes papers on all aspects of astronomy and astrophysics

Context. Rotation contributes to internal mixing processes and observed variability in massive stars. A significant number of binary stars are not in strict synchronous rotation, including all eccentric systems. This leads to a tidally induced and time-variable differential rotation structure. Aims. We present a method for exploring the rotation structure of asynchronously rotating binary stars. Methods. The method consists of solving the equations of motion of a 3D grid of volume elements located above the rigidly rotating core of a binary star in the presence of gravitational, centrifugal, Coriolis, gas pressure and viscous forces to obtain the angular velocity as a function of the three spatial coordinates and time. The method is illustrated for a short period massive binary in a circular orbit and in an eccentric orbit. Results. We find that for a fixed set of stellar and orbital parameters, the induced rotation structure and its temporal variability depend on the degree of departure from synchronicity. In eccentric systems, the structure changes over the orbital cycle with maximum amplitudes occurring potentially at orbital phases other than periastron passage. We discuss the possible role of the time-dependent tidal flows in enhancing the mixing efficiency and speculate that, in this context, slowly rotating asynchronous binaries could have more efficient mixing than the analogous more rapidly rotating but tidally locked systems. We find that some observed nitrogen abundances depend on the orbital inclination, which, if real, would imply an inhomogeneous chemical distribution over the stellar surface or that tidally induced spectral line variability, which is strongest near the equator, affects the abundance determinations. Our models predict that, neglecting other angular momentum transfer mechanisms, a pronounced initial differential rotation structure converges toward average uniform rotation on the viscous timescale. Conclusions. A broader perspective of binary star structure, evolution and variability can be gleaned by taking into account the processes that are triggered by asynchronous rotation.