Related papers: Physics of Eclipsing Binaries. III. Spin-Orbit Mis…
In astronomy, the problem of black holes is arguably second in importance only to the problem of cosmology. A current frontier in black hole research is the measurement of spin. During the past three years, the spins of several stellar-mass…
Exoplanets whose orbit is misaligned with the spin of their host star could have originated from high-speed gas blobs, which are observed in multitudes in nearby supernova remnants and planetary nebulae. These blobs grow in mass and slow…
We report on spectroscopic and photometric observations through transits of the exoplanets WASP-22b and WASP-26b, intended to determine the systems' spin-orbit angles. We combine these data with existing data to refine the system…
The majority of solar-type stars reside in multiple systems, especially binaries. They form in dense cores of molecular clouds that are observed to be significantly magnetized. Our previous study shows that magnetic braking can tighten the…
The presence of r mode oscillations (global modes of Rossby waves coupled with buoyancy) in an eclipsing binary is recognized as frequency groups in a frequency-amplitude diagram obtained from a Fourier analysis of Kepler light curve data.…
By cross-matching the eclipsing binary catalog from TESS with that from LAMOST MRS, semi-detached eclipsing binaries with radial velocities coverage spanning more than 0.3 phases were authenticated. The absolute parameters for these systems…
The evolutionary history of an extrasolar system is, in part, fossilized through its planets' orbital orientations relative to the host star's spin axis. However, spin-orbit constraints for warm Jupiters -- particularly in binary star…
X-ray binary systems consist of a companion star and a compact object in close orbit. Thanks to their copious X-ray emission, these objects have been studied in detail using X-ray spectroscopy and timing. The inclination of these systems is…
Binary black hole mergers are of great interest to the astrophysics community, not least because of their promise to test general relativity in the highly dynamic, strong field regime. Detections of gravitational waves from these sources by…
The orbits of binary stars precess as a result of general relativistic effects, forces arising from the asphericity of the stars, and forces from additional stars or planets in the system. For most binaries, the theoretical and observed…
We analyze a tilt instability of the orbit of an outer planet in a two planet circumbinary system that we recently reported. The binary is on an eccentric orbit and the inner circumbinary planet is on a circular polar orbit that causes the…
The stellar obliquity of a planetary system is often used to help constrain the system's formation and evolution. One of the mechanisms to reorient the stellar spin involves a secular resonance crossing due to the dissipation of the…
We provide an analytical approximation to the dynamics in each of the three most important low order secondary resonances (1:1, 2:1, and 3:1) bifurcating from the synchronous primary resonance in the gravitational spin-orbit problem. To…
The spin properties of merging black holes observed with gravitational waves can offer novel information about the origin of these systems. The magnitude and orientations of black hole spins offer a record of binaries' evolutionary history,…
We report on observations of the Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect for the XO-3 exoplanetary system. The RM effect for the system was previously measured by two different groups, but their results were statistically inconsistent. To obtain a…
Despite the wide range of planet-star (mis)alignments in the mature population of transiting exoplanets, the small number of known young transiting planets are nearly all aligned with the rotation axes of their host stars, as determined by…
Binaries play key roles in determining stellar parameters and exploring stellar evolution models. We build a catalog of 88 eclipsing binaries with spectroscopic information, taking advantage of observations from both the Large Sky Area…
Stellar obliquity, the angle between a planet's orbital axis and its host star's spin axis, traces the formation and evolution of a planetary system. In transiting exoplanet observations, only the sky-projected stellar obliquity can be…
Abridged. Eclipsing spectroscopic double-lined binaries are the prime source of precise and accurate measurements of masses and radii of stars. These measurements provide a stringent test of models of stellar evolution that are persistently…
Astronomers generally assume planet-forming disks are aligned with the rotation of their host star. However, recent observations have shown evidence of warping in protoplanetary disks. One can measure the statistical alignment between the…