The Physics of Wind-Fed Accretion

We provide a brief review of the physical processes behind the radiative driving of the winds of OB stars and the Bondi-Hoyle-Lyttleton capture and accretion of a fraction of the stellar wind by a compact object, typically a neutron star, in detached high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs). In addition, we describe a program to develop global models of the radiatively-driven photoionized winds and accretion flows of HMXBs, with particular attention to the prototypical system Vela X-1. The models combine XSTAR photoionization calculations, HULLAC emission models appropriate to X-ray photoionized plasmas, improved models of the radiative driving of photoionized winds, FLASH time-dependent adaptive-mesh hydrodynamics calculations, and Monte Carlo radiation transport. We present two- and three-dimensional maps of the density, temperature, velocity, ionization parameter, and emissivity distributions of representative X-ray emission lines, as well as synthetic global Monte Carlo X-ray spectra. Such models help to better constrain the properties of the winds of HMXBs, which bear on such fundamental questions as the long-term evolution of these binaries and the chemical enrichment of the interstellar medium.