Related papers: Mergers and Obliquities in Stellar Triples
Stellar mergers and common-envelope evolution are fast (dynamical-timescale) interactions in binary stars that drastically alter their evolution. They are key to understanding a plethora of astrophysical phenomena. Stellar mergers are…
The prevalence of binary stars at close separations implies that many of these systems will interact or merge during the binary's lifetime. This paper presents hydrodynamic simulations of the scenario of binary coalescence through unstable…
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…
In many exoplanetary systems with `hot Jupiters', it is observed that the spin axes of host stars are highly misaligned to planetary orbital axes. In this study, a possible channel is investigated for producing such a misalignment under a…
Observations of exoplanets over the last two decades have revealed a new class of Jupiter-size planets with orbital periods of a few days, the so-called "hot Jupiters". Recent measurements using the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect have shown…
GAIA wide stellar binaries (separations $\sim 10^3-10^{4.5}$ AU) are observed to have a superthermal eccentricity distribution function (DF), well-fit by $P(e) \propto e^\alpha$ with $\alpha \sim 1.2$. In Modak \& Hamilton (2023), we proved…
The discovery of transiting circumbinary planets by the Kepler mission suggests that planets can form efficiently around binary stars. None of the stellar binaries currently known to host planets has a period shorter than 7 days, despite…
Galactic centers are very dynamically active environments, often harbouring a nuclear star cluster and supermassive black hole at their cores. Binaries in these environments are subject to strong tidal fields that can efficiently torque its…
We present the result of $N$-body simulations of dynamical evolution of triple massive blackhole (BH) systems in galactic nuclei. We found that in most cases two of the three BHs merge through gravitational wave (GW) radiation in the…
Mechanisms have been proposed to enhance the merger rate of stellar mass black hole binaries, such as the Von Zeipel-Lidov-Kozai mechanism (vZLK). However, high inclinations are required in order to greatly excite the eccentricity and to…
Within hierarchical triple stellar systems, there exists a tidal process unique to them, known as tertiary tides. In this process, the tidal deformation of a tertiary in a hierarchical triple drains energy from the inner binary, causing the…
It was recently demonstrated that contact binaries occur in globular clusters (GCs) only immediately below turn-off point and in the region of blue straggler stars (BSs). In addition, observations indicate that at least a significant…
We introduce a new model to explain the modulation of the orbital period observed in close stellar binary systems based on an angular momentum exchange between the spin of the active component and the orbital motion. This spin-orbit…
Dense stellar systems such as globular clusters are believed to harbor merging binary black holes (BHs). The evolution of such binaries is driven by interactions with other stars, most notably, binary-single interactions. Traditionally,…
Transiting planets in multiple-star systems, especially high-order multiples, make up a small fraction of the known planet population but provide unique opportunities to study the environments in which planets would have formed.…
The isolated binary evolution model for merging neutron stars (NSs) involves processes such as mass transfer, common-envelope evolution, and natal kicks, all of which are poorly understood. Also, the predicted NS-NS merger rates are…
Thousands of tight ($<1$ AU) main sequence binaries have been discovered, but it is uncertain how they formed. There is likely too much angular momentum in a collapsing, fragmenting protostellar cloud to form such binaries in situ,…
Spherically symmetric equal mass star clusters containing a large amount of primordial binaries are studied using a hybrid method, consisting of a gas dynamical model for single stars and a Monte Carlo treatment for relaxation of binaries…
Orbital evolution of binary systems in dense stellar clusters is important in a variety of contexts: origin of blue stragglers, progenitors of compact object mergers, millisecond pulsars, and so on. Here we consider the general problem of…
The orbital separation of compact binary stars will shrink with time due to the emission of gravitational radiation. This inspiralling phase of a binary system's evolution generally will be very long compared to the system's orbital period,…