Related papers: A spectroscopic survey on the multiplicity of high…
We report about an ongoing photometric and spectroscopic monitoring survey of about 250 O- and 540 B-type stars in the southern Milky Way with the aim to determine the fraction of close binary systems as a function of mass and to determine…
Spectroscopic multiplicity surveys of O stars in young clusters and OB associations have revealed that a large portion ($\sim$ 70%) of these massive stars (M$_{i}$ $\gt$ 15 $M_{\odot}$) belong to close and short-period binaries (physical…
Two main models coexist for the environment in which stars form. The clustered model stipulates that the bulk of star formation occurs within dense embedded clusters, but only a minority of them survive the residual gas expulsion phase…
We analyze 4,859 O-stars in the OGLE-III photometric survey of the LMC, including 415 eclipsing binaries (EBs). After accounting for the geometrical probability of eclipses, the period distribution of O-type binaries across $P$ = 2.5-200…
About 20% of all massive stars in the Milky Way have unusually high velocities, the origin of which has puzzled astronomers for half a century. We argue that these velocities originate from strong gravitational interactions between single…
We perform binary population synthesis calculations to study the origin and the characteristics of runaway O and B stars which are ejected by the supernova explosion of the companion star in a binary system. The number of OB runaways can be…
Most main sequence stars, unlike our Sun, belong to multiple systems with two or more stars. How and when these multiples come together and become bound is uncertain, since the earliest stages of star formation are difficult to resolve. We…
Close to 100 per cent of massive stars are thought to be in binary systems. The multiplicity of massive stars seems to be intrinsically linked to their formation and evolution, and Massive Young Stellar Objects are key in observing this…
In two papers we try to confirm that all Galactic high-mass stars are formed in a cluster environment, by excluding that O-type stars found in the Galactic field actually formed there. In de Wit et al. (2004) we presented deep K-band…
At high metallicity, a majority of massive stars have at least one close stellar companion. The evolution of such binaries is subject to strong interaction processes, heavily impacting the characteristics of their life-ending supernova and…
We present a model for the formation of high-mass close binary systems in the context of forming massive stars through gas accretion in the centres of stellar clusters. A low-mass wide binary evolves under mass accretion towards a high-mass…
We discuss the observed multiplicity of massive stars and implications on theories of massive star formation. After a short summary of the literature on massive star multiplicity, we focus on the O- and B-type stars in the Orion Nebula…
Multiplicity among massive stars represents a major uncertainty in stellar evolution theory, because the extra physical processes that it introduces significantly impacts each star's structure. While multiplicity of O-type stars is fairly…
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…
Binaries are excellent astrophysical laboratories that provide us with direct measurements of fundamental stellar parameters. Compared to single isolated star, multiplicity induces new processes, offering the opportunity to confront our…
We present the first multi-epoch radial velocity study of embedded young massive stars using near-infrared spectra obtained with ISAAC mounted at the ESO Very Large Telescope, with the aim to detect massive binaries. Our 16 targets are…
We present a study aimed at clarifying the birthplace for 43 massive O-type field stars. In this first paper we present the observational part: a search for stellar clusters near the target stars. We derive stellar density maps at two…
The formation of massive stars in close binary systems is complicated due to their high radiation pressure, the crowded environment and the expected minimum separation for fragmentation being many times greater than the orbital separation.…
Aims. We analyze the multiplicity properties of the massive O-type star population. With 360 O-type stars, this is the largest homogeneous sample of massive stars analyzed to date. Methods. We use multi-epoch spectroscopy and variability…
Runaway stars are defined as stars that depart from their birth clusters at high peculiar velocities. There are two main mechanisms for the formation of runaway stars, i.e., the binary-supernova scenario (BSS) and the dynamical ejection…