Related papers: Luminous Blue Variables are Antisocial: Their Isol…
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…
We review the various techniques through which wind properties of massive stars - O stars, AB supergiants, Luminous Blue Variables (LBVs), Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars and cool supergiants - are derived. The wind momentum-luminosity relation (e.g.…
The progenitors of Type IIP supernovae have an apparent upper limit to their initial masses of about 20 solar masses, suggesting that the most massive red supergiants evolve to warmer temperatures before their terminal explosion. But very…
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…
Understanding the transfer of mass and angular momentum in binary interactions is crucial for modelling the evolution of any interacting binary after the first mass transfer phase. Mass transfer physics assumptions shape the predictions for…
Luminous compact blue galaxies (LCBGs) are a diverse class of galaxies characterized by high luminosity, blue color, and high surface brightness that sit at the critical juncture of galaxies evolving from the blue to the red sequence. As…
We identify and quantify the set of constraints that neutron star-normal star binaries must satisfy in order to become observable LMXBs. These constraints are related to (i) the thermal and hydrostatic equilibrium of the donors, (ii) the…
We consider the origins of enigmatic stellar populations in four Local Group galactic nuclei, specifically the Milky Way, M31, M32 and M33. These are centrally concentrated blue stars, found in three out of the four nuclear star clusters…
We report optical observations of the Luminous Blue Variable (LBV) HR Carinae which show that the star has reached a visual minimum phase in 2009. More importantly, we detected absorptions due to Si IV 4088-4116 Angstroms. To match their…
Blue stragglers are natural phenomena in star clusters. They originate through mass transfer in isolated binaries, as well as through encounters between two or more stars, in a complex interplay between stellar dynamics and stellar…
Neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes are the remnants of massive stars, which ended their lives in supernova explosions. These exotic objects can only be studied in relatively rare cases. If they are interacting with close companions…
Multiplicity is a key statistic for understanding the formation of very low mass (VLM) stars and brown dwarfs. Currently, the separation distribution of VLM binaries remains poorly constrained at small separations (<1 AU), leading to…
The presence of a nearby companion alters the evolution of massive stars in binary systems, leading to phenomena such as stellar mergers, X-ray binaries and gamma-ray bursts. Unambiguous constraints on the fraction of massive stars affected…
We investigate the morphology of the collision front between the stellar winds of binary components in two long-period binary systems, one consisting of a hydrogen rich Wolf-Rayet star (WNL) and an O-star and the other of a Luminous Blue…
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…
We present Chandra and Swift X-ray observations of four extremely low-mass (ELM) white dwarfs with massive companions. We place stringent limits on X-ray emission from all four systems, indicating that neutron star companions are extremely…
The properties of multiple stellar systems have long provided important empirical constraints for star formation theories, enabling (along with several other lines of evidence) a concrete, qualitative picture of the birth and early…
Intermediate-mass galaxies, including the Milky Way, typically host both a supermassive black hole (SMBH) and a nuclear stellar cluster (NSC). Binaries in an NSC evolve via close encounters with surrounding stars and secular processes…
In this paper, we systematically studied blue stragglers produced from primordial binary evolution via a binary population synthesis approach, and examined their contribution to the integrated spectral energy distributions of the host…
Binary mass transfer via Roche-lobe overflow (RLOF) is a key channel for producing stripped-envelope Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars and may be critical to account for SN Ib/c progenitors. RY Scuti is an extremely rare example of a massive binary…