Abstract

A new X-ray spectral modeling tool and its first application to Zeta Puppis.

Anthony HERVE (Université de Liège)

G. Rauw, Université de Liège

Over the last decades, knowledge of the stellar wind structure and mass loss rates of massive stars has tremendously evolved. UV and optical high resolution spectroscopic studies reveal now, a clumped structure of the stellar winds certainly embedded in a tenuous inter-clump medium. At the same time, with the launch of Chandra and XMM and their high-resolution X-ray spectrographs, important progress has been achieved in the observational studies of stellar winds thanks to the possibility to perform detailed analyses of X-ray line profiles. In this context, we are developing a new modeling tool to analyse in detail the structures of the O-type star winds as well as the properties of the X-ray emitting plasma, such as its size and its abundances. Through its application to the brightest star, Zeta Puppis, I will discuss the necessity to work on a simultaneous fit of the total spectrum to constrain multi-temperature plasma and wind parameters, in order to reduce the degeneracy induced by single line profiles analyses.