Wolf-Rayet Hypernovae: Relativistic Jet Magnetism, Long-Range Heliospheric Capture, and Biospheric Risk

We present a comparative analysis of relativistic jet formation from solitary and binary Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars undergoing core collapse, emphasizing how binary interactions reshape jet velocity, magnetic topology, instability growth, and long-range radiative fields. Solitary WR stars produce fast, amorphous jets with Lorentz factors Γ ≈ 100–1000 (v ≈ 0.999c), governed by internal drift-current magnetic fields and strong relativistic beaming. In contrast, tight WR binaries yield slower (~0.25c), magnetically confined jets, shaped by the companion’s magnetosphere and orbital modulation, which impose a constant-pitch helical structure.