Revisiting the Impact of Dust Production from Carbon-Rich Wolf-Rayet Binaries

Abstract

We present a dust spectral energy distribution (SED) and binary stellar population analysis revisiting the dust production rates (DPRs) in the winds of carbon-rich Wolf-Rayet (WC) binaries and their impact on galactic dust budgets. DustEM SED models of 19 Galactic WC ``dustars" reveal DPRs of ${\dot{M}}_d\sim 10^{-10}-10^{-6}$ M${}_{\odot }$ yr${}^{-1}$ and carbon dust condensation fractions, ${\chi }_C$, between $0.002-40\%$. A large ($0.1-1.0$ $\mu$m) dust grain size composition is favored for efficient dustars where ${\chi }_C\gtrsim 1\%$. Results for dustars with known orbital periods verify a power-law relation between ${\chi }_C$, orbital period, WC mass-loss rate, and wind velocity consistent with predictions from theoretical models of dust formation in colliding-wind binaries. We incorporated dust production into Binary Population and Spectral Synthesis (BPASS) models to analyze dust production rates from WC dustars, asymptotic giant branch stars (AGBs), red supergiants (RSGs), and core-collapse supernovae (SNe). BPASS models assuming constant star formation (SF) and a co-eval $10^6$ M${}_{\odot }$ stellar population were performed at low, Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC)-like, and solar metallicities (Z = 0.001, 0.008, and 0.020). Both constant SF and co-eval models show that SNe are net dust destroyers at all metallicities. Constant SF models at LMC-like metallicities show that AGB stars slightly outproduce WC binaries and RSGs by factors of $2-3$, whereas at solar metallicites WC binaries are the dominant source of dust for $\sim 60$ Myr until the onset of AGBs, which match the dust input of WC binaries. Co-eval population models show that for "bursty" SF, AGB stars dominate dust production at late times ($t\gtrsim 70$ Myr).

34 pages, 12 figures, 7 tables, Accepted for publication in ApJ

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Cited by in corpus (20)

• The James Webb Space Telescope Mission
• Carbonaceous dust grains seen in the first billion years of cosmic time
• Nested Dust Shells around the Wolf-Rayet Binary WR 140 observed with JWST
• The cosmic carbon footprint of massive stars stripped in binary systems
• Aluminium-26 from massive binary stars II. Rotating single stars up to core-collapse and their impact on the early Solar System
• Revealing Efficient Dust-Formation at Low Metallicity in Extragalactic Carbon-Rich Wolf-Rayet Binaries
• Radiation-driven acceleration in the expanding WR140 dust shell
• Aluminium-26 from massive binary stars III. Binary stars up to core-collapse and their impact on the early Solar System
• Investigating 39 Galactic Wolf-Rayet stars with VLTI/GRAVITY: Uncovering A Long Period Binary Desert
• From Dust to Nanodust: Resolving Circumstellar Dust from the Colliding-Wind Binary Wolf-Rayet (WR) 140
• An exploration of dust grain growth within WCd systems using an advected scalar dust model
• Exploring dust growth in the episodic WCd system WR140
• Smoke on the wind: dust nucleation in archetype colliding wind pinwheel WR104
• Presolar grains
• The contribution by luminous blue variable stars to the dust content of the Magellanic Clouds
• Inverse Compton cooling of thermal plasma in colliding-wind binaries
• The Galactic Center in Color: Measuring Extinction with High-Proper-Motion Stars
• Chandra X-ray Measurement of Heavy Element Abundances of Wolf-Rayet Stars in the Galactic Center
• Discovery of a 310-day Period from the Enshrouded Massive System NaSt1 (WR 122)
• Constraining properties of dust formed in Wolf-Rayet binary WR 112 using mid-infrared and millimeter observations