Observational signatures of convectively driven waves in massive stars


C. Aerts & T. M. Rogers

Instituut voor Sterrenkunde, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200D, 3001 Leuven, Belgium

Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Newcastle University, UK

We demonstrate observational evidence for the occurrence of
convectively driven internal gravity waves (IGW) in young massive O-type stars observed with high-precision CoRoT space
photometry. This evidence results from a comparison between velocity spectra based on
2D hydrodynamical simulations of IGW in a differentially-rotating massive star and
the observed spectra.We also show that the velocity spectra
caused by IGW may lead to detectable line-profile variability
and explain the occurrence of macroturbulence in the observed line profiles of OB stars. Our findings
provide predictions that can readily be tested by including a sample of bright
slowly and rapidly rotating OB-type stars in the scientific programme of the
K2 mission accompanied by high-precision spectroscopy and their
confrontation with multi-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of IGW for various masses and ages.

Reference: ApJ Letters, in press
Status: Manuscript has been accepted

Weblink: http://arxiv.org/abs/1505.06648

Comments:

Email: conny.aerts@ster.kuleuven.be