Interacting winds in massive binaries

Institut d'Astrophysique & de Géophysique, Université de Liège, Belgium

Abstract

Massive stars feature highly energetic stellar winds that interact whenever two such stars are bound in a binary system. The signatures of these interactions are nowadays found over a wide range of wavelengths, including the radio domain, the optical band, as well as X-rays and even γ-rays. A proper understanding of these effects is thus important to derive the fundamental parameters of the components of massive binaries from spectroscopic and photometric observations.