Mass loss from inhomogeneous hot star winds: III. An effective-opacity formalism for line radiative transfer in accelerating, clumped two-component media, and first results on theory and diagnostics

We provide a fast and easy-to-use formalism for treating the reduction in effective opacity associated with optically thick clumps in an accelerating two-component medium. This study shows that porosity in velocity space can have a significant impact not only on the diagnostics, but also on the dynamics and theory of radiatively driven winds.