Related papers: Evaluating the impact of binary parameter uncertai…
Most of massive stars form in binary or higher-order systems in clumpy, sub-structured clusters. In the very first phases of their life, these stars are expected to interact with the surrounding environment, before being released to the…
Understanding the galaxy in which we live is one of the great intellectual challenges facing modern science. With the advent of high quality observational data, the chemical evolution modeling of our galaxy has been the subject of numerous…
The detection of pulsations from an X-ray binary is an unambiguous signature of the presence of a neutron star in the system. When the pulsations are missed in the radio band, their detection at other wavelengths, like X-ray or gamma-rays,…
The study of stellar populations is a discipline that is highly dependent on both imaging and spectroscopy. I discuss techniques in different regimes of resolving power: broadband imaging (R~4), intermediate band imaging (R~16, 64),…
Exoplanet properties depend on how well the host star is characterized. For instance, the stellar atmospheric parameters (i.e., effective temperature, surface gravity and overall metallicity) are needed to derive the stellar mass and radius…
Observations from optical to centimeter wavelengths have demonstrated that multiple systems of two or more bodies is the norm at all stellar evolutionary stages. Multiple systems are widely agreed to result from the collapse and…
The efficient use of near-IR data in studies of external stellar populations depends on our ability to recognize the nature of the predominant sources of light, and to interprete these findings in terms of age and metallicity. Here we focus…
Characterization of the binary fractions in star clusters is of fundamental importance for many fields in astrophysics. Observations indicate that the majority of stars are found in binary systems, while most stars with masses greater than…
Binary stars are dynamical systems formed by two stars that are physically bound by the gravitational force. Binary stars are privileged laboratories, allowing one to measure the fundamental properties of stars but also potentially changing…
Binary stars play a vital role in astrophysical research, as a good fraction of stars are in binaries. Binary fraction (BF) is known to change with stellar mass in the Galactic field, but such studies in clusters require binary…
Numerous investigations on the fundamental properties of low-mass stars using eclipsing binaries indicate a strong discrepancy between theory and observations that is still awaiting explanation. Current models seem to predict radii for…
The fraction of binary systems in various stellar populations of the Galaxy and the distribution of their orbital parameters are important but not well-determined factors in studies of star formation, stellar evolution, and Galactic…
During these last decades, our knowledge of evolutionary and structural properties of stars of different mass and chemical composition is significantly improved. This result has been achieved as a consequence of our improved capability in…
We explore the effects of dynamical evolution in dense clusters on the companion mass ratio distribution (CMRD) of binary stars. Binary systems are destroyed by interactions with other stars in the cluster, lowering the total binary…
Planets are observed to orbit the component star(s) of stellar binary systems on so-called circumprimary or circumsecondary orbits, as well as around the entire binary system on so-called circumbinary orbits. Depending on the orbital…
Eclipsing binaries provide one of the most direct mechanisms for measuring stellar properties such as mass and radius, but historically, determining these properties has been non-trivial and computationally prohibitive. As such, only a…
Long period variable stars arise in the final stages of the asymptotic giant branch phase of stellar evolution. They have periods of up to ~1000d and amplitudes that can exceed a factor of three in the I-band flux. These stars pulsate…
The distributions of the initial main-sequence binary parameters are one of the key ingredients in obtaining evolutionary predictions for compact binary (BH-BH / BH-NS / NS-NS) merger rates. Until now, such calculations were done under the…
All measurements of cosmic star formation must assume an initial distribution of stellar masses -- the stellar initial mass function -- in order to extrapolate from the star-formation rate measured for typically rare, massive stars (> 8…
Colours of spiral galaxies generally are affected by the underlying old stellar population, younger stars, and extinction by dust. Old and young populations generally can be disentangled using a combination of blue and near-infrared…