Related papers: Going out with a bang: compact object collisions r…
Recent gravitational wave observations include possible detections of black hole - neutron star binary mergers. As with binary black hole mergers, numerical simulations help characterize the sources. For binary systems with neutron star…
The tidal disruption of a solar mass star around a supermassive black hole has been extensively studied analytically and numerically. In these events the star develops into an elongated banana-shaped structure. After completing an eccentric…
Circumbinary planets whose orbits become unstable may be ejected, accreted, or even captured by one of the stars. We quantify the relative rates of these channels, for a binary of secondary star's mass fraction 0.1 with an orbit of 1AU. The…
The presence of a nearby companion alters the evolution of massive stars in binary systems, leading to phenomena such as stellar mergers, X-ray binaries and gamma-ray bursts. Unambiguous constraints on the fraction of massive stars affected…
The coalescence of binary neutron stars can yield the expulsion of a fast-moving, quasi-isotropic material, which may induce thermal radiation and give rise to kilonova emission. Moreover, the interaction between the ejected material and…
The duration of orbital decay induced by gravitational waves (GWs) is often the bottleneck of the evolutionary phases going from star formation to a merger. We show here that kicks imparted to the newly born compact object during the second…
Nuclear star clusters that surround supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in galactic nuclei are among the densest systems in the Universe, harbouring millions of stars and compact objects (COs). Within a few parsecs from the SMBH, stars can…
The overall frequency and other statistical properties of binary systems suggest that star formation is intrinsically a complex and chaotic process, and that most binaries and single stars actually originate from the decay of multiple…
Massive stars end their short lives in spectacular explosions, supernovae, that synthesize new elements and drive galaxy evolution. Throughout history supernovae were discovered chiefly through their delayed optical light, preventing…
Non-axisymmetric features are found in the core collapse of a rapidly rotating massive star, which might have important implications for magnetic field amplification and production of a bipolar outflow that can explode the star, as well as…
Stars are generally spherical, yet their gaseous envelopes often appear non-spherical when ejected near the end of their lives. This quirk is most notable during the planetary nebula phase when these envelopes become ionized. Interactions…
Neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes are the remnants of massive stars, which ended their lives in supernova explosions. These exotic objects can only be studied in relatively rare cases. If they are interacting with close companions…
As gravitational wave detections increase the number of observed compact binaries (consisting of neutron stars or blacks), we begin to probe the different conditions producing these binaries. Most studies of compact remnant formation focus…
Strong dynamical interactions among stars and compact objects are expected in a variety of astrophysical settings, such as star clusters and the disks of active galactic nuclei. Via a suite of 3D hydrodynamics simulations using the…
A diverse range of phenomena is possible when a black hole experiences very rapid accretion from a disk due to the incomplete explosion of a massive presupernova star endowed with rotation. In the most extreme case, the outgoing shock fails…
We perform 3D hydrodynamical simulations of new-born neutron stars (NSs) colliding with main-sequence binary companions after supernova explosions. Based on those hydrodynamical models, we construct a semi-analytical formula that describes…
When two stars collide and merge they form a new star that can stand out against the background population in a starcluster as a blue straggler. In so called collision runaways many stars can merge and may form a very massive star that…
We consider a formation scenario for supramassive neutron stars (SMNSs) taking place through mass and angular momentum transfer from a close companion during a Low Mass X-ray Binary (LMXB) phase, with the ensuing suppression of the magnetic…
Compact object mergers eject neutron-rich matter in a number of ways: by the dynamical ejection mediated by gravitational torques, as neutrino-driven winds and probably also a good fraction of the resulting accretion disc finally becomes…
The stellar origin of gamma-ray bursts can be explained by the rapid release of energy in a highly collimated, extremely relativistic jet. This in turn appears to require a rapidly spinning highly magnetised stellar core that collapses into…