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Line-Driven Ablation of Circumstellar Disks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2017

Nathaniel Dylan Kee
Affiliation:
Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Tübingen, Germany email: nathaniel-dylan.kee@uni-tuebingen.de
Stan Owocki
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, USA
Rolf Kuiper
Affiliation:
Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Tübingen, Germany email: nathaniel-dylan.kee@uni-tuebingen.de
Jon Sundqvist
Affiliation:
Instituut voor Sterrenkunde, KU Leuven, Belgium
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Abstract

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Mass is a key parameter in understanding the evolution and eventual fate of hot, luminous stars. Mass loss through a wind driven by UV-scattering forces is already known to reduce the mass of such stars by 10−10 − 10−4 M/yr over the course of their lifetimes. However, high-mass stars already drive such strong winds while they are still in their accretion epoch. Therefore, stellar UV-scattering forces will efficiently ablate material off the surface of their circumstellar disks, perhaps even shutting off the final accretion through the last several stellar radii and onto a massive protostar. By using a three-dimensional UV-scattering prescription, we here quantify the role of radiative ablation in controlling the disk’s accretion rate onto forming high-mass stars. Particular emphasis is given to the potential impact of this process on the stellar upper mass limit.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2017