Probing Thin Winds in Massive OB Stars of the SMC with JWST/NIRSPEC Br-alpha Spectroscopy
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| Natura: | Preprint |
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2025
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| author | Garcia, Miriam Fullerton, Alexander W. Najarro, Francisco Puls, Joachim Lennon, Daniel J. Bouret, Jean-Claude Evans, Christopher J. Hanson, Margaret Herrero, Artemio Hillier, D. John Legault, Alexandre Rubio-Díez, María del Mar Simón-Díaz, Sergio Sundqvist, Jon O. Tramper, Frank |
| author_facet | Garcia, Miriam Fullerton, Alexander W. Najarro, Francisco Puls, Joachim Lennon, Daniel J. Bouret, Jean-Claude Evans, Christopher J. Hanson, Margaret Herrero, Artemio Hillier, D. John Legault, Alexandre Rubio-Díez, María del Mar Simón-Díaz, Sergio Sundqvist, Jon O. Tramper, Frank |
| contents | Mass loss is a key physical process in the evolution of massive stars, the impact of which propagates into galactic evolution, population synthesis models, the interpretation of high-redshift galaxies, and explosive events such as supernovae. However, there are currently substantial uncertainties in the low-metallicity, low-luminosity thin wind regime where classical diagnostics (H-alpha and ultraviolet, UV, P Cygni profiles) yield wind momenta that are 1 to 2 orders of magnitude below prescriptions implemented by default in most evolutionary models. Here, we present spectra of the mass-loss diagnostic line Br-alpha in 15 OB-type stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud obtained using the Near Infrared Spectrograph on the James Webb Space Telescope. The line profile morphology, recovered by virtue of the outstanding signal-to-noise ratio of the data and the avoidance of regions with nebular emission, is consistent with predictions based on previous mass-loss rate estimates from optical and UV spectroscopy. Moreover, an initial spectroscopic analysis of sources covering the thin wind regime confirms the low mass-loss rates, indicates a change of slope in the wind-momentum-luminosity relation in this regime with respect to high-luminosity objects, and strengthens the abovementioned discrepancies with commonly used wind-momentum prescriptions. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_02667 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Probing Thin Winds in Massive OB Stars of the SMC with JWST/NIRSPEC Br-alpha Spectroscopy Garcia, Miriam Fullerton, Alexander W. Najarro, Francisco Puls, Joachim Lennon, Daniel J. Bouret, Jean-Claude Evans, Christopher J. Hanson, Margaret Herrero, Artemio Hillier, D. John Legault, Alexandre Rubio-Díez, María del Mar Simón-Díaz, Sergio Sundqvist, Jon O. Tramper, Frank Solar and Stellar Astrophysics Astrophysics of Galaxies Mass loss is a key physical process in the evolution of massive stars, the impact of which propagates into galactic evolution, population synthesis models, the interpretation of high-redshift galaxies, and explosive events such as supernovae. However, there are currently substantial uncertainties in the low-metallicity, low-luminosity thin wind regime where classical diagnostics (H-alpha and ultraviolet, UV, P Cygni profiles) yield wind momenta that are 1 to 2 orders of magnitude below prescriptions implemented by default in most evolutionary models. Here, we present spectra of the mass-loss diagnostic line Br-alpha in 15 OB-type stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud obtained using the Near Infrared Spectrograph on the James Webb Space Telescope. The line profile morphology, recovered by virtue of the outstanding signal-to-noise ratio of the data and the avoidance of regions with nebular emission, is consistent with predictions based on previous mass-loss rate estimates from optical and UV spectroscopy. Moreover, an initial spectroscopic analysis of sources covering the thin wind regime confirms the low mass-loss rates, indicates a change of slope in the wind-momentum-luminosity relation in this regime with respect to high-luminosity objects, and strengthens the abovementioned discrepancies with commonly used wind-momentum prescriptions. |
| title | Probing Thin Winds in Massive OB Stars of the SMC with JWST/NIRSPEC Br-alpha Spectroscopy |
| topic | Solar and Stellar Astrophysics Astrophysics of Galaxies |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.02667 |