Related papers: Open questions in massive star research
One of the important issues regarding the final evolution of stars is the impact of binarity. A rich zoo of peculiar, evolved objects are born from the interaction between the loosely bound envelope of a giant, and the gravitational pull of…
Binary stars produce an array of dramatic astrophysical phenomena. They allow us to probe stellar structure, nuclear physics, and gravitational wave physics. They also produce the powerful supernovae that allow us to measure the scale of…
The fates of planetary systems provide unassailable insights into their formation and represent rich cross-disciplinary dynamical laboratories. Mounting observations of post-main-sequence planetary systems necessitate a complementary level…
We discuss the evolutionary properties of primordial massive and very massive stars, supposed to have formed from metal-free gas. Stellar models are presented over a large range of initial masses (8 Msun <= Mi <= 1000 Msun), covering the…
In close binaries mass and angular momentum can be transferred from one star to the other during Roche-lobe overflow. The efficiency of this process is not well understood and constitutes one of the largest uncertainties in binary…
Rapidly rotating stars are readily produced in binary systems. An accreting star in a binary system can be spun up by mass accretion and quickly approach the break-up limit. Mergers between two stars in a binary are expected to result in…
This dedicated journal collection will present and discuss a variety of science cases that can be used to extend our knowledge of massive stars and the influence of their rapid rotation on their subsequent evolution. The aim is to build…
The majority of stars more massive than the Sun is found in binary or multiple star systems and many of them will interact during their evolution. Specific interactions, where progenitors and post-mass transfer (MT) systems are clearly…
We present in this contribution our set of multiwavelength synthesis models including the evolution of single and binary stars. The main results we have obtained can be summarized as follows: (a) massive close-binary systems will start to…
Large-scale dipolar surface magnetic fields have been detected in a fraction of OB stars, however only few stellar evolution models of massive stars have considered the impact of these fossil fields. We are performing 1D hydrodynamical…
The majority of all stars are members of a binary system. The evolution of such binary stars and their subsequent production of pairs of compact objects in tight orbits, such as double neutron stars and double black holes, play a central…
We present a brief overview of the theory of stellar winds with a strong emphasis on the radiation-driven outflows from massive stars. The resulting implications for the evolution and fate of massive stars are also discussed. Furthermore,…
We give a global analysis of mass transfer variations in low-mass X-ray binaries and cataclysmic variables whose evolution is driven by the nuclear expansion of the secondary star. We show that limit cycles caused by irradiation of the…
We discuss the physics of the $\Omega \Gamma$-- Limit, i.e. when the star is unbound as a result of {\emph{both}} rotation and radiation pressure. We suggest that the $\Omega \Gamma$-- Limit is what makes the Humphreys--Davidson Limit.…
Giant impacts refer to collisions between two objects each of which is massive enough to be considered at least a planetary embryo. The putative collision suffered by the proto-Earth that created the Moon is a prime example, though most…
The vast majority of massive binary systems in the universe is evidently unsuited to produce merging binary black holes. However, several narrow evolutionary paths of isolated massive binaries towards this goal have recently been…
Results are presented on component masses and system angular momenta for over a hundred low-temperature contact binaries. It is found that the secondary components in close binary systems are very similar in mass. Our observational evidence…
Roche-lobe overflow and common envelope evolution are very important in binary evolution, which is believed to be the main evolutionary channel to hot subdwarf stars. The details of these processes are difficult to model, but adiabatic…
Gravitational waves from merging binary black holes can be used to shed light on poorly understood aspects of massive binary stellar evolution, such as the evolution of massive stars (including their mass-loss rates), the common envelope…
We consider the hypothesis that the formation of elliptical galaxies includes a phase in which star formation is mostly restricted to massive stars, with the bias towards high mass stars increasing with elliptical galaxy mass. The mass…