Related papers: Mass loss from binary stars approaching merger
Binary stars commonly pass through phases of direct interaction which result in the rapid loss of mass, energy, and angular momentum. Though crucial to understanding the fates of these systems, including their potential as gravitational…
Tight and compact binary systems, such as double neutron star binaries, are believed to undergo a common envelope evolution phase, resulting in strongly bound orbits. During this phase, the outer layers of the primary star are expelled,…
A variety of supernova events, including Type IIn supernovae and ultraluminous supernovae, appear to have lost up to solar masses of their envelopes in 10's to 100's of years leading up to the explosion. In order to explain the close timing…
Planets and other low-mass binary companions to stars face a variety of potential fates as their host stars move off the main sequence and grow to subgiants and giants. Stellar mass loss tends to make orbits expand, and tidal torques tend…
We investigate the mass loss from a rotationally distorted envelope following the early, rapid in-spiral of a companion star inside a common envelope. For initially wide, massive binaries (M_1+M_2=20M_{\odot}, P\sim 10 yr), the primary has…
Common envelopes form in dynamical time scale mass exchange, when the envelope of a donor star engulfs a much denser companion, and the core of the donor plus the dense companion star spiral inward through this dissipative envelope. As…
I study some aspects of common envelope evolution, where a compact star enters the envelope of a giant star. I show that in some binary systems under a narrow range of parameters, a substantial fraction of the giant stellar envelope is lost…
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…
Massive stars are usually found in binaries, and binaries with periods less than 10 days may have a preference for near equal component masses. In this paper we investigate the evolution of these binaries all the way to contact and the…
Binary neutron stars have been observed as millisecond pulsars, gravitational-wave sources, and as the progenitors of short gamma-ray bursts and kilonovae. Massive stellar binaries that evolve into merging double neutron stars are believed…
Close-orbit binaries consisting of two compact objects are a center of attention because of the detection of gravitational-radiation-induced mergers. The creation of close, compact-object binaries involves physical processes that are not…
Three-dimensional simulations usually fail to cover the entire dynamical common-envelope phase of gravitational wave progenitor systems due to the vast range of spatial and temporal scales involved. We investigated the common-envelope…
One of the two outcomes of a common envelope event is a merger of the two stars. To date, the best known case of a binary merger is the V1309 Sco outburst, where the orbital period was known and observed to decay up to the outburst. Using…
We analyze the dynamical evolution of binary stars that interact with a static background of single stars in the environment of a massive black hole (MBH). All stars are considered to be single mass, Newtonian point particles. We follow the…
Young binaries within dense molecular clouds are subject to dynamical friction from ambient gas. Consequently, their orbits decay, with both the separation and period decreasing in time. A simple analytic expression is derived for this…
Black hole - neutron star $(BH/NS)$ binaries are of interest in many ways: they are intrinsically multi-messenger systems, highly transient, radiate gravitational waves detectable by LIGO, and may produce $\gamma$-ray bursts. Although it…
Most stars with birth masses larger than that of our Sun belong to binary or higher order multiple systems. Similarly, most stars have stellar winds. Radiation pressure and multiplicity create outflows of material that remove mass from the…
The discovery via gravitational waves of binary black hole systems with total masses greater than $60M_\odot$ has raised interesting questions for stellar evolution theory. Among the most promising formation channels for these systems is…
Binary stars are pairs of stars that are gravitationally bound, providing in some cases accurate measurements of their masses and radii. As such, they serve as excellent testbeds for the theory of stellar structure and evolution. Moreover,…
The common envelope phase of binary star evolution plays a central role in many evolutionary pathways leading to the formation of compact objects in short period systems. Using three dimensional hydrodynamical computations, we review the…