English

Close binary evolution. III. Impact of tides, wind magnetic braking, and internal angular momentum transport

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2017-12-27 v1

Abstract

Massive stars with solar metallicity lose important amounts of rotational angular momentum through their winds. When a magnetic field is present at the surface of a star, efficient angular momentum losses can still be achieved even when the mass-loss rate is very modest, at lower metallicities, or for lower-initial-mass stars. In a close binary system, the effect of wind magnetic braking also interacts with the influence of tides, resulting in a complex evolution of rotation. We study the interactions between the process of wind magnetic braking and tides in close binary systems. We discuss the evolution of a 10 M_\odot star in a close binary system with a 7 M_\odot companion using the Geneva stellar evolution code. The initial orbital period is 1.2 days. The 10 M_\odot star has a surface magnetic field of 1 kG. Various initial rotations are considered. We use two different approaches for the internal angular momentum transport. In one of them, angular momentum is transported by shear and meridional currents. In the other, a strong internal magnetic field imposes nearly perfect solid-body rotation. The evolution of the primary is computed until the first mass-transfer episode occurs. The cases of different values for the magnetic fields and for various orbital periods and mass ratios are briefly discussed. We show that, independently of the initial rotation rate of the primary and the efficiency of the internal angular momentum transport, the surface rotation of the primary will converge, in a time that is short with respect to the main-sequence lifetime, towards a slowly evolving velocity that is different from the synchronization velocity. (abridged).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1709.01902,
  title  = {Close binary evolution. III. Impact of tides, wind magnetic braking, and internal angular momentum transport},
  author = {H. F. Song and G. Meynet and A. Maeder and S. Ekstrom and P. Eggenberger and C. Georgy and Y. Qin and T. Fragos and M. Soerensen and F. Barblan and G. A. Wade},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.01902},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

11 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics