Related papers: Rotational synchronisation of B-type binaries in 3…
Tidal friction has long been recognized to circularize the orbits of binary stars over time. In this study, we use the observed distribution of orbital eccentricities in populations of binary stars to probe tidal dissipation. In contrast to…
A high fraction of massive stars are found to be binaries but only a few of them are reported as photometrically variable. By studying the populations of SB2 in the 30 Doradus region, we found a subset of them that have photometry from the…
Solar-type stars, which shed angular momentum via magnetised stellar winds, enter the main sequence with a wide range of rotational periods $P_\text{rot}$. This initially wide range of rotational periods contracts and has mostly vanished by…
We study the linear, but fully non-adiabatic tidal response of a uniformly rotating, somewhat evolved X_c=0.4, 10 Msun main sequence star to the dominant l=2 components of its binary companion's tidal potential. This is done numerically…
We measured projected rotational velocities of more than a hundred apparently single sdBs. A comparison is made with sdB stars in binary systems with orbits so wide, that tidal interaction becomes negligible. All of these stars are slow…
The fundamental properties of low-mass stars are not as well understood as those of their more massive counterparts. The best method for constraining these properties, especially masses and radii, is to study eclipsing binary systems, but…
Rotation is a directly-observable stellar property, and drives magnetic field generation and activity through a magnetic dynamo. Main sequence stars with masses below approximately 0.35Msun (mid-to-late M dwarfs) are fully-convective, and…
Binary post-asymptotic giant branch (post-AGB) stars are thought to be the products of a strong but poorly-understood interaction during the AGB phase. The aim of this contribution is to update the orbital elements of a sample of galactic…
Observations of massive stars in young open clusters (< ~8 Myr) have shown that a majority of them are in binary systems, most of which will interact during their life. Populations of massive stars older than ~20 Myr allow us to probe the…
The origin of hot subdwarf B stars (sdBs) is still unclear. About half of the known sdBs are in close binary systems for which common envelope ejection is the most likely formation channel. Little is known about this dynamic phase of binary…
This paper summarizes our recent results on tidal interaction in high mass X-ray binaries and symbiotic stars. We demonstrate that the giant in symbiotic stars with orbital periods <1200 d are co-rotating (synchronized). The symbiotics MWC…
We investigate the multiplicity properties of 408 B-type stars observed in the 30 Doradus region of the Large Magellanic Cloud with multi-epoch spectroscopy from the VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey (VFTS). We use a cross-correlation method to…
We analyze 221 eclipsing binaries (EBs) in the Large Magellanic Cloud with B-type main-sequence (MS) primaries ($M_1$ $\approx$ 4 - 14 M$_{\odot}$) and orbital periods $P$ = 20 - 50 days that were photometrically monitored by the Optical…
We examine how tides, stellar evolution, and magnetic braking shape the rotation period (P$_{rot}$) evolution of low-mass stellar binaries up to orbital periods (P$_{orb}$) of 100 d across a wide range tidal dissipation parameters using two…
All four circumbinary (CB) protoplanetary disks orbiting short-period ($P < 20$ day) double-lined spectroscopic binaries (SB2s)---a group that includes UZ Tau E, for which we present new ALMA data---exhibit sky-plane inclinations $i_{\rm…
Recent observations of PSR J0045-7319, a radio pulsar in a close eccentric orbit with a massive main sequence B-star companion, indicate that the system's orbital period is decreasing on a timescale $\sim 5 x 10^{5}$ years (Kaspi et al.…
Open clusters offer us the means to study stellar properties in samples with well-defined ages and initial chemical composition. Here we present a survey of projected rotational velocities for a large sample of mainly B-type stars in young…
We report our survey of $\gamma$\,Doradus stars from the 4-yr \textit{Kepler} mission. These stars pulsate mainly in g modes and r modes, showing period-spacing patterns in the amplitude spectra. The period-spacing patterns are sensitive to…
Rossby modes are the oscillations in a rotating fluid, whose restoring force is the Coriolis force. They provide an additional diagnostic to understand the rotation of stars, which complicates asteroseismic modelling. We report 82…
Studies of solar-type binaries have found coplanarity between the equatorial and orbital planes of systems with $<$40 AU separation. By comparison, the alignment of the equatorial and orbital axes in the substellar regime, and the…