Stellar Collisions and Blue Straggler Formation
Abstract
We review recent 3D hydrodynamic calculations of stellar collisions using the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method, and we discuss the implications of the results for the formation and evolution of blue stragglers in globular clusters. We also discuss the construction of simple analytic models for merger remnants, approximating the mass loss, shock heating, mixing, and angular momentum transport during a collision with simple algorithms that can be calibrated using our 3D hydrodynamic results. The thermodynamic and chemical composition profiles predicted by these simple models are compared with those from our SPH simulations, demonstrating that our new models provide accurate representations of true collisional merger remnants.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0101087,
title = {Stellar Collisions and Blue Straggler Formation},
author = {James C. Lombardi and Frederic A. Rasio},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0101087},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
29 pages, 7 figures, to appear in "Stellar Collisions, Mergers and their Consequences," ed. M. Shara (ASP Conference Series), for associated mpeg files, see http://research.amnh.org/~summers/scviz/lombardi.html