X-ray emission from magnetic massive stars

Magnetically confined winds of early-type stars are expected to be sources of bright and hard X-rays. In an attempt to clarify the systematics of the observed X-ray properties, we have analyzed a large series of Chandra and XMM observations, corresponding to over 100 exposures of 60% of the known magnetic massive stars listed recently by Petit et al. (2013). We notably show that the X-ray luminosity is strongly correlated with mass-loss rate, in agreement with predictions of magnetically confined wind models. We also investigated the behavior of other X-ray properties (plasma temperature, absorption, variability), yielding additional constraints on models. This work not only advances our knowledge of the X-ray emission of massive stars, but also suggests new observational and theoretical avenues to further explore magnetically confined winds.