Related papers: Binary Asteroid Systems: Tidal End States and Esti…
Although tidal dissipation in binary stars has been studied for over a century, theoretical predictions have yet to match the observed properties of binary populations. This work quantitatively examines the recent proposal of tidal…
Multiple systems play an important role in the evolution of star clusters. First we discuss several formation mechanisms which depend on the presence of binaries, either primordial or of dynamical origin. Hierarchical configurations are…
Polluted white dwarfs are generally accreting terrestrial-like material that may originate from a debris belt like the asteroid belt in the solar system. The fraction of white dwarfs that are polluted drops off significantly for white…
Although the association of gamma-ray bursts with massive stellar death is on firm footing, the nature of the progenitor system and the key ingredients required for a massive star to produce a gamma-ray burst remain open questions. Here, we…
The formation of massive stars is one of the major unsolved problems in stellar astrophysics. However, only few if any of these are found as single stars, on average massive stars have more than one companion. Many of them are born in dense…
The typical product of the star formation process is a binary star. Binaries have provided the first dynamical measures of the masses of pre-main-sequence (PMS) stars, providing support for the calibrations of PMS evolutionary tracks.…
Stars approaching supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the centers of galaxies can be torn apart by strong tidal forces. We study the physics of tidal disruption by a binary SMBH as a function of the binary mass ratio $q = M_2 / M_1$ and…
Binary stars evolve into chemically-peculiar objects and are a major driver of the Galactic enrichment of heavy elements. During their evolution they undergo interactions, including tides, that circularize orbits and synchronize stellar…
Tidal forces are important for understanding how close binary stars and compact exoplanetary systems form and evolve. However, tides are difficult to model and significant uncertainties exist about the strength of tides. Here, we…
Tertiary tides (TTs), or the continuous tidal distortion of the tertiary in a hierarchical triple system, can extract energy from the inner binary, inducing within it a proclivity to merge. Despite previous work on the subject, which…
Binary stars are common. While only those with small separations may exchange gas with one another, even the widest binaries interact with their gaseous surroundings. Drag forces and accretion rates dictate how these systems are transformed…
We investigate the dynamical evolution of hierarchical three-body systems under the effect of tides, when the ratio of the orbital semi-major axes is small and the mutual inclination is relatively large (greater than 20 degrees). Using the…
It appears that at least several percent of large Kuiper belt objects are members of wide binaries. Physical collisions are too infrequent to account for their formation. Collisionless gravitational interactions are more promising. These…
Recent radial velocity observations have indicated that Jovian-type planets can exist in moderately close binary star systems. Numerical simulations of the dynamical stability of terrestrial-class planets in such environments have shown…
Planets orbiting one of the two stars in a binary are vulnerable to gravitational perturbations from the other star. Particularly, highly eccentric companion stars risk disrupting planetary orbits, such as in the extreme system TOI 4633…
Recent observations (Burnes et al 2002,Veillet et al 2002, Margot et al 2002a) have revealed an unexpectedly high binary fraction among the Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) that populate the Kuiper Belt. The TNO binaries are strikingly…
The asteroid belt was dynamically shaped during and after planet formation. Despite representing a broad ring of stable orbits, the belt contains less than one one-thousandth of an Earth mass. The asteroid orbits are dynamically excited…
Using 3D radiation-hydrodynamic simulations and analytic theory, we study the orbital evolution of asymptotic-giant-branch (AGB) binary systems for various initial orbital separations and mass ratios, and thus different initial accretion…
Young binaries within dense molecular clouds are subject to dynamical friction from ambient gas. Consequently, their orbits decay, with both the separation and period decreasing in time. A simple analytic expression is derived for this…
In the last few years, a number of planets have been proposed to orbit several post main-sequence binary star systems on the basis of observed variations in the timing of eclipses between the binary components. A common feature of these…