Related papers: On the Missing Red Giants near the Galactic Center
The tidal disruption of a star by a supermassive black hole is expected to lead to a short bright flare followed by an extended period of low-level emission. Existing models of the late-time accretion of the stellar debris via a thin disk…
Robust age estimates of red giant stars are now possible thanks to the precise inference of their mass based on asteroseismic constraints. However, there are cases where such age estimates can be highly precise yet very inaccurate. An…
I propose that the relatively high eccentricity found in some tidally strongly interacting binary systems, where the mass-losing star is an evolved giant star, e.g., an asymptotic giant branch star, is caused by an enhanced mass loss rate…
Tidal disruption events occur when a star passes too close to a massive black hole and it is totally ripped apart by tidal forces. It may also happen that the star is not close enough to the black hole to be totally disrupted and a less…
We derive the rates of capture, Ndot, of main sequence turn off stars by the central massive black hole in a sample of galaxies from Magorrian et al. 1998. The disruption rates are smaller than previously believed with Ndot ~ 10^-4 - 10^-7…
Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) it has recently been shown that the red fraction of satellite galaxies increases with stellar mass. Semi-analytical models, however, predict red satellite fractions that are independent of…
We show that main-sequence stars in dense stellar cusps around massive black holes are likely to rotate at a significant fraction of the centrifugal breakup velocity due to spin-up by hyperbolic tidal encounters. We use realistic stellar…
According to dynamo theory, stars with convective envelopes efficiently generate surface magnetic fields, which manifest as magnetic activity in the form of starspots, faculae, flares, when their rotation period is shorter than their…
We investigate the observed depletion of red giants in the cores of post-core-collapse globular clusters. In particular, the evolutionary scenario we consider is a binary consisting of two low-mass stars which undergoes two common envelope…
We consider the long-term tidal heating of a star by the supermassive black hole at the Galactic center, SgrA*. We show that gravitational interaction with background stars leads to a linear growth of the tidal excitation energy with the…
The distribution of stars around a massive black hole (MBH) has been addressed in stellar dynamics for the last four decades by a number of authors. Because of its proximity, the centre of the Milky Way is the only observational test case…
We analyze stellar tidal disruption events as a possible observational signature of gravitational wave induced recoil of supermassive black holes. As a black hole wanders through its galaxy, it will tidally disrupt bound and unbound stars…
Among 19 red-giant stars belonging to eclipsing binary systems that have been identified in Kepler data, 15 display solar-like oscillations. We study whether the absence of mode detection in the remaining 4 is an observational bias or…
During the red giant phase, stars loose mass at the highest rate since birth. The mass-loss rate is not fixed, but varies from star-to-star by up to 5\%, resulting in variations of the star's luminosity at the tip of the red giant branch…
There is strong evidence for some kind of massive dark object in the centres of many galaxy bulges. The detection of flares from tidally disrupted stars could confirm that these objects are black holes (BHs). Here we present calculations of…
We point out that the tidal disruption of a giant may leave a luminous (10^35-10^39 ergs/s), hot (10-100 eV) stellar core. The ``supersoft'' source detected by Chandra at the center of M31 may be such a core; whether or not it is, the…
Approximately 30% of luminous red giants exhibit a Long Secondary Period (LSP) of variation in their light curves, in addition to a shorter primary period of oscillation. The cause of the LSP has so far defied explanation: leading…
The mechanism behind the Long Secondary Period (LSP) observed in pulsating red giants still remains unknown. In this work, I investigate the connection between the Red Giant Branch and Asymptotic Giant Branch evolution and the appearance of…
Among stars in Galactic globular clusters the carbon abundance tends to decrease with increasing luminosity on the upper red giant branch, particularly within the lowest metallicity clusters. While such a phenomena is not predicted by…
The orbital decay and tidal disruption of a star cluster in a galaxy is studied in an analytical manner. Owing to dynamical friction, the star cluster spirals in toward the center of the galaxy. Simultaneously, the galactic tidal field…