THEORETICAL CONTINUUM ENERGY-DISTRIBUTIONS FOR WOLF-RAYET STARS

We discuss the problem of assigning an effective temperature to models of stellar evolution in the Wolf-Rayet stage. We conclude that it is best to use models with different velocity laws depending on the stellar temperature. We follow the simplest approach and propose to use a standard law with beta = 1 for the cooler and beta = 2 for the hotter Wolf-Rayet stars. We present energy distributions from non-LTE model calculations with a beta = 2 velocity law. The new calculations, together with published results based on beta = 1, allow one to synthesize realistic spectra of starburst regions. The flux tables are available in di ital form from the authors.