Related papers: Analytic approximations for massive close post-mas…
Eclipsing binary stars provide highly accurate measurements of the fundamental physical properties of stars. They therefore serve as stringent tests of the predictions of evolutionary models upon which most stellar age determinations are…
Massive stars are essential to understand a variety of branches of astronomy including galaxy and star cluster evolution, nucleosynthesis and supernovae, pulsars and black holes. It has become evident that massive star evolution is very…
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…
Using the StarTrack population synthesis code we compute the distribution of masses of merging compact object (black hole or neutron star) binaries. The shape of the mass distribution is sensitive to some of the parameters governing the…
The complexity of composite spectra of close binary star system makes study of the spectra of their component stars extremely difficult. For this reason there exists very little information on the photospheric chemical composition of stars…
Knowledge of the binary population in stellar groupings provides important information about the outcome of the star forming process in different environments. Binarity is also a key ingredient in stellar population studies and is a…
Binaries that contain a hot subdwarf (sdB) star and a main sequence companion may have interacted in the past. This binary population has historically helped determine our understanding of binary stellar evolution. We have computed a grid…
We present an analytical model that describes the response of companion stars after being impacted by a supernova in a close binary system. This model captures key properties of the luminosity evolution obtained from 1D stellar evolution…
In Paper I, we followed the evolution of binary stars as they orbited near the supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the Galactic center, noting the cases in which the two stars would come close enough together to collide. In this paper we…
We explore the evolution of massive stars (>8 solar masses) with 1-D models and present analytical fits to the masses and binding energies of the convective portions of their envelopes. These fits are given as functions of total mass,…
Mass transfer (MT) is a fundamental process in stellar evolution. While MT in circular orbits is well studied, observations indicate that it also occurs in eccentric ones, where theoretical models are limited. We present a new semi-analytic…
High rates of stable mass transfer likely occur for some binary star systems, but the resulting flow of mass and angular momentum (AM) is unclear. We perform hydrodynamical simulations of a polytropic donor star and a point mass secondary…
The formation of close massive black-hole binaries is a challenge for binary evolutionary models, especially the intriguing system M33 X-7 which harbours one of the most massive stellar-mass black holes (16 solar masses) orbiting a 70 solar…
Be/X-ray binaries comprise roughly two-thirds of the high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs), which is a class of X-ray binaries that results from the high mass of the companion or donor star (> 10 solar masses). Currently the formation and…
Evidence from the analysis of eclipsing binary systems revealed that late-type stars are larger and cooler than predicted by models, and that this is probably caused by stellar magnetic activity. In this work, we revisit this problem taking…
Fragmentation and fission of giant molecular clouds occasionally results in a pair of gravitationally bound star clusters that orbit their mutual centre of mass for some time, under the influence of internal and external perturbations. We…
A crucial ingredient in population synthesis studies involving massive stars is the determination of whether they explode or implode in the end. While the final fate of a massive star is sensitive to its core structure at the onset of…
We present a framework for the computation of effective stellar yields that accounts for a mixed population of binary and single stars under an adjustable mix of binary evolution settings: the binary fraction, the accretion efficiencies of…
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…
Although the association of gamma-ray bursts with massive stellar death is on firm footing, the nature of the progenitor system and the key ingredients required for a massive star to produce a gamma-ray burst remain open questions. Here, we…