A New Numerical Method for Solving Radiation Driven Winds from Hot Stars

Abstract

We present a general method for solving the non--linear differential equation of monotonically increasing steady--state radiation driven winds. We graphically identify all the singular points before transforming the momentum equation to a system of differential equations with all the gradients explicitly give. This permits a topological classification of all singular points and to calculate the maximum and minimum mass--loss of the wind. We use our method to analyse for the first time the topology of the non--rotating frozen in ionisation m--CAK wind, with the inclusion of the finite disk correction factor and find up to 4 singular points, three of the x--type and one attractor--type. The only singular point (and solution passing through) that satisfies the boundary condition at the stellar surface is the standard m--CAK singular point.