Colliding Wind Binary X-ray Sources

Abstract

Very massive stars (${\gtrsim} 20$ M$_{\odot}$) are rare but important components of galaxies. Products of core nucleosynthesis from these stars are distributed into the circumstellar environment via wind-driven mass loss. Explosive nucleosynthesis after core collapse further enriches the galactic medium. Clusters of such stars can produce galactic chimneys which can pierce the galactic disk and chemically enrich intergalactic space. Such processes are vitally important to the chemical evolution of the early Universe, when the stellar mass function was much more weighted to massive stars.

Very massive stars are difficult to study, since they are formed in distant clusters which yield problems of sensitivity and source crowding. A relatively new tool for studying these systems is via high spatial, spectral and temporal resolution observations in the X-ray band. In this note we describe some recent progress in studying mechanisms by which very massive stars produce X-ray emission.