Models of radiation-driven winds from general relativistic neutron stars

Fully relativistic models of winds driven by the super-Eddington luminosity of X-ray bursting neutron stars are presented. It is found that all the super-Eddington energy flux is used to gently blow off matter with a terminal velocity of the order of 0.01 c, and that the radiative luminosity never exceeds the Eddington limit by more than 1 percent. The photospheric radius of an outflowing envelope is always at least 10 times larger than the radius of a neutron star, and the effective temperature is correspondingly low, always smaller than 10 exp 6.8 K. There is an almost continuous transition between static extended envelopes of neutron stars that have a slightly sub-Eddington luminosity and outflowing envelopes that are slightly super-Eddington and have a low mass outflow rate.