Related papers: V1309 SCO - Understanding a merger
V1309 Sco was proposed to be a stellar merger and a common envelope transient based on the pre-outburst light curve of a contact eclipsing binary with a rapidly decaying orbital period. Using published data, I show that the period decay…
Binary stars commonly pass through phases of direct interaction which result in the rapid loss of mass, energy, and angular momentum. Though crucial to understanding the fates of these systems, including their potential as gravitational…
Stellar mergers are expected to take place in numerous circumstences in the evolution of stellar systems. In particular, they are considered as a plausible origin of stellar eruptions of the V838 Mon type. V1309 Sco is the most recent…
Nova Sco 2008 (=V1309 Sco) is an example of a V838 Mon type eruption rather than a typical classical nova. This enigmatic object was recently shown to have resulted from the merger of two stars in a contact binary. It is the first stellar…
CONTEXT: V1309 Sco is the only certain noncompact stellar merger, due to its indisputable preoutburst light curve matching that of a contact binary of almost equal mass stars. Therefore, anything that can be deduced from the existing…
Some binary stars experience common envelope evolution, which is accompanied by drastic loss of angular momentum, mass, and orbital energy and which leaves behind close binaries often involving at least one white dwarf, neutron star, or…
Stellar mergers are estimated to be common events in the Galaxy. The best studied stellar merger case to date is V1309 Sco (= Nova Scorpii 2008) which was originally misclassified as a Nova event. Later identified as the merger of the…
We study the initial conditions of a common envelope (CE) event resulting in a stellar merger. A merger's dynamics could be understood through its light curve, but no synthetic light curve has yet been created for the full evolution. Using…
It was recently demonstrated that the eruption of V1309 Sco was a result of a merger of the components of a cool contact binary. We computed a set of evolutionary models of the detached binaries with different initial parameters to compare…
Massive stars are usually found in binaries, and binaries with periods less than 10 days may have a preference for near equal component masses. In this paper we investigate the evolution of these binaries all the way to contact and the…
We present mid-IR photometry and spectra of the merged binary V1309 Sco taken between 18 and 23 months after outburst. Strong mid-IR emission and a solid state absorption feature indicate the presence of a significant amount of dust in the…
This paper investigates the recent stellar merger transient M31LRN 2015 in the Andromeda galaxy. We analyze published optical photometry and spectroscopy along with a Hubble Space Telescope detection of the color and magnitude of the…
Luminous Red Novae (LRNe) are enigmatic transient events distinguished by a rapid rise in luminosity, a plateau in luminosity, and spectra which become redder with time. The best-observed system before, during, and after the outburst is…
We derive the constraints on the mass ratio for a binary system to merge in a violent process. We find that the secondary to primary stellar mass ratio should be ~0.003 < (M_2/M_1) < ~0.15. A more massive secondary star will keep the…
After the initial fast spiral-in phase experienced by a common-envelope binary, the system may enter a slow, self-regulated phase, possibly lasting 100s of years, in which all the energy released by orbital decay can be efficiently…
Three-dimensional simulations usually fail to cover the entire dynamical common-envelope phase of gravitational wave progenitor systems due to the vast range of spatial and temporal scales involved. We investigated the common-envelope…
A stellar common envelope occurs in a binary system when the atmosphere of an evolving star expands to encompass an orbiting companion object. Such systems are predicted to evolve rapidly, ejecting the stellar envelope and leaving the…
The formation of a double white dwarf binary likely involves a common envelope (CE) event between a red giant and a white dwarf (WD) during the most recent episode of Roche lobe overflow mass transfer. We study the role of recombination…
The recently detected gravitational wave signals (GW150914 and GW151226) of the merger event of a pair of relatively massive stellar-mass black holes (BHs) calls for an investigation of the formation of such progenitor systems in general.…
Because the majority of massive stars are born as members of close binary systems, populations of massive main-sequence stars contain stellar mergers and products of binary mass transfer. We simulate populations of massive stars accounting…