Radiation-driven winds of hot luminous stars. XI. Frictional heating in a multicomponent stellar wind plasma and decoupling of radiatively accelerated ions.

It is shown that the usual assumption of regarding radiatively driven winds of hot stars as a one-component fluid is wrong under certain circumstances. A detailed investigation of the mechanism of momentum transfer from radiatively accelerated ions to the bulk matter of a stellar wind plasma via Coulomb collisions shows that, at least for thin winds, the one-fluid description is not justified. Instead, for objects with thin winds (candidates are late OV and early BV stars, central stars of planetary nebulae, and subdwarf O-stars) a multicomponent model is required because ionic decoupling occurs, which leads to a 'runaway mechanism' for the accelerated ions and hence terminates the momentum transfer from ions to the bulk matter of the wind (e.g. H and He). As a consequence the predicted one-fluid terminal wind velocities are significantly reduced. This is shown for the late main sequence O-star Tau Scorpii (O9.5V). Furthermore, the collisionally induced momentum transfer is inevitably accompanied by the production of entropy in the form of frictional heating, which dominates the energy balance in the case of thin winds and thus enhances the runaway mechanism.