The VLT-FLAMES survey of massive stars: atmospheric parameters and rotational velocity distributions for B-type stars in the Magellanic Clouds

Abstract

Aims. We aim to provide the atmospheric parameters and rotational velocities for a large sample of O-and early B-type stars, analysed in a homogeneous and consistent manner, for use in constraining theoretical models. Methods. Atmospheric parameters, stellar masses, and rotational velocities have been estimated for approximately 250 early B-type stars in the Large (LMC) and Small (SMC) Magellanic Clouds from high-resolution VLT-FLAMES data using the non-LTE TLUSTY model atmosphere code. This data set has been supplemented with our previous analyses of some 50 O-type stars (Mokiem et al. 2006(Mokiem et al. , 2007 and 100 narrow-lined early B-type stars (Hunter et al. 2006;Trundle et al. 2007) from the same survey, providing a sample of ∼400 early-type objects. Results. Comparison of the rotational velocities with evolutionary tracks suggests that the end of core hydrogen burning occurs later than currently predicted and we argue for an extension of the evolutionary tracks. We also show that the large number of the luminous blue supergiants observed in the fields are unlikely to have directly evolved from main-sequence massive O-type stars as neither their low rotational velocities nor their position on the H-R diagram are predicted. We suggest that blue loops or mass-transfer binary systems may populate the blue supergiant regime. By comparing the rotational velocity distributions of the Magellanic Cloud stars to a similar Galactic sample, we find that (at 3σ confidence level) massive stars (above 8 M ) in the SMC rotate faster than those in the solar neighbourhood. However there appears to be no significant difference between the rotational velocity distributions in the Galaxy and the LMC. We find that the v sin i distributions in the SMC and LMC can modelled with an intrinsic rotational velocity distribution that is a Gaussian peaking at 175 km s −1 (SMC) and 100 km s −1 (LMC) with a 1 e half width of 150 km s −1 . We find that in NGC 346 in the SMC, the 10-25 M main-sequence stars appear to rotate faster than their higher mass counterparts. It is not expected that O-type stars spin down significantly through angular momentum loss via stellar winds at SMC metallicity, hence this could be a reflection of mass dependent birth spin rates. Recently Yoon et al. (2006) have determined rates of GRBs by modelling rapidly rotating massive star progenitors. Our measured rotational velocity distribution for the 10-25 M stars is peaked at slightly higher velocities than they assume, supporting the idea that GRBs could come from rapid rotators with initial masses as low as 14 M at low metallicities.

The VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey

“…extends at least until an effective temperature of 20 000 K. While this is cooler than adopted by Brott et al (2011), we note that the v e sin i distribution they used to define the TAMS (Hunter et al 2008b), in particular the high v e sin i stars, is also extended by the present work to approximately 20 000 K (cf. Sect.…”

Critical study of the distribution of rotational velocities of Be stars

“…Nevertheless, depending on the statistical problem, the suited simplified functional form Π(x) is probably different. Moreover, this leads us to conclude that it is not enough to claim that Gaussian or Maxwellian distributions are consistent with the observed distributions simply because the first two moments (average and dispersion) coincide, as the literature sometimes concludes (e.g., Mokiem et al 2006;Dufton et al 2006b;Hunter et al 2008).…”

The discovery of a shell-like event in the O-type star HD 120678

“…It is a well-known fact that Be stars are fast rotators, with rotational velocities comparable to the critical velocities (Hunter et al 2008;Martayan et al 2006), and it is also known that fast rotation plays a fundamental role in the evolution of massive stars (Maeder & Meynet 2000). Both stellar absorption lines and circumstellar emission features in HD 120678 are rotationally broadened.…”