Related papers: Mergers and Obliquities in Stellar Triples
Solar-type binaries with short orbital periods ($P_{\rm close}$ $\equiv$ 1 - 10 days; $a$ $\lesssim$ 0.1 AU) cannot form directly via fragmentation of molecular clouds or protostellar disks, yet their component masses are highly correlated,…
We present a technique to identify the most probable dynamical formation scenario for an observed binary or triple system containing one or more merger products or, alternatively, to rule out the possibility of a dynamical origin. Our…
We study the steady-state orbital distributions of giant planets migrating through the combination of the Kozai-Lidov (KL) mechanism due to a stellar companion and friction due to tides raised on the planet by the host star. We run a large…
We explore the effects of long term secular perturbations on the distribution of dark matter particles around Supermassive Black Hole (BH) binaries. We show that in the hierarchical (in separation) three-body problem, one of the BHs and a…
Black hole (BH) mergers driven by gravitational perturbations of external companions constitute an important class of formation channels for merging BH binaries detected by LIGO. We have studied the orbital and spin evolution of binary BHs…
Nuclear star clusters around massive black holes are expected to be abundant in stellar mass black holes and black hole binaries. These binaries form a hierarchical triple system with the massive black hole at the center. Gravitational…
The Kozai mechanism for a hierarchical triple system could reduce the merger time of inner eccentric binary emitting gravitational waves (GWs), and has been qualitatively explained with the secular theory that is derived by averaging…
We study the spin and eccentricity evolution of black-hole (BH) binaries that are perturbed by tertiary masses and experience the Lidov-Kozai (LK) excitation. We focus on three aspects. Firstly, we study the spin-orbit alignment of the…
[Abridged]We investigate the long-term secular dynamics and Lidov-Kozai(LK) eccentricity oscillations of quadruple systems composed of two binaries at quadrupole and octupole order in the perturbing Hamiltonian. We show that the fraction of…
Mergers of compact object binaries are one of the most powerful sources of gravitational waves (GWs) in the frequency range of second-generation ground-based gravitational wave detectors (Advanced LIGO and Virgo). Dynamical simulations of…
White dwarf-white dwarf (WD-WD) mergers may lead to type Ia supernovae events. Thompson (2011) suggested that many such binaries are produced in hierarchical triple systems. The tertiary induces eccentricity oscillations in the inner binary…
We consider the formation of binary black hole mergers through the evolution of field massive triple stars. In this scenario, favorable conditions for the inspiral of a black hole binary are initiated by its gravitational interaction with a…
We study the production of main sequence mergers of tidally-synchronized primordial short-period binaries. The principal ingredients of our calculation are the angular momentum loss rates inferred from the spindown of open cluster stars and…
The large eccentricities of cold Jupiters and the existence of hot Jupiters have long challenged theories of planet formation. A proposed solution to both of these puzzles is high-eccentricity migration, in which an initially cold Jupiter…
Galactic nuclei are often found to contain young stellar populations and, in most cases, a central supermassive black hole (SMBH). Most known massive stars are found in binaries or higher-multiplicity systems, and in a galactic nucleus the…
Blue straggler stars (BSSs) are stars observed to be hotter and bluer than other stars with the same luminosity in their environment. As such they appear to be much younger than the rest of the stellar population. Two main channels have…
The Milky Way and a significant fraction of galaxies are observed to host a central Massive Black Hole (MBH) embedded in a non-spherical nuclear star cluster. We study the secular orbital evolution of compact-object binaries in these…
In dense stellar systems, frequent dynamical interactions between binaries lead to the formation of multiple systems. In this contribution we discuss the dynamical formation of hierarchically stable triples: the formation rate, main…
Collisions of main sequence stars occur frequently in dense star clusters. In open and globular clusters, these collisions produce merger remnants that may be observed as blue stragglers. Detailed theoretical models of this process require…
We present equations governing the way in which both the orbit and the intrinsic spins of stars in a close binary should evolve subject to a number of perturbing forces, including the effect of a third body in a possibly inclined wider…