Related papers: Microlensing of strongly interacting binary system…
The current modelling of single microlensing light curves neglects the possibility that only a fraction of the light is due to the lensed star, the remaining being due to a close, unresolved blend, which may be related or unrelated to the…
We present a quantitative analysis of the effect of microlensing caused by random motion of individual stars in the galaxy which is lensing a background quasar. We calculate a large number of magnification patterns for positions of the…
Close binary stars are binary stars where the component stars are close enough such that they can exchange mass and/or energy. They are subdivided into semi-detached, overcontact or ellipsoidal binary stars. A challenging problem in the…
This paper is devoted to exploring how we can discover and study nearby (< 1-2 kpc) planetary and binary systems by observing their action as gravitational lenses. Lensing can extend the realm of nearby binaries and planets that can be…
Circumbinary disks are found in a variety of astrophysical scenarios, spanning binary star formation to accreting supermassive black hole binaries. The interaction with a circumbinary disk can yield opposite effects on the binary orbit…
In the current strategy of microlensing planet searches focusing on high-magnification events, wide and close binaries pose important sources of contamination that imitates planetary signals. For the purpose of finding systematic…
Because the majority of massive stars are born as members of close binary systems, populations of massive main-sequence stars contain stellar mergers and products of binary mass transfer. We simulate populations of massive stars accounting…
We present a new method to identify and probe planetary companions of stars in the Galactic Bulge and Magellanic Clouds using gravitational microlensing. While spectroscopic studies of these planets is well beyond current observational…
The contact phase represents a crossroad in the evolution of massive binary stars. Depending on the internal physics, the predicted end products can vary greatly including various exotic objects such as Be stars, magnetic massive stars,…
Massive structures, such as galaxies, act as strong gravitational lenses on background sources. When the background source is a quasar, several lensed images are seen, as magnified or de-magnified versions of the same object. The detailed…
The masses of stars including stellar remnants are almost exclusively known from binary systems. In this work, we study gravitational microlensing of faint background galaxies by isolated neutron stars (pulsars). We show that the resulting…
This paper presents first results on the line profile shapes from a circumstellar envelope in bulk motion as modified by a microlensing event. Only geometrically and optically thin spherical shells in uniform expansion or rotation are…
Stellar mergers and common-envelope evolution are fast (dynamical-timescale) interactions in binary stars that drastically alter their evolution. They are key to understanding a plethora of astrophysical phenomena. Stellar mergers are…
We have attempted to establish an observational evidence for presence of distant companions which may have acquired and/or absorbed the angular momentum during evolution of multiple systems thus facilitating or enabling formation of contact…
We suggest a simple synthesis model of an eclipsing binary system which includes one component with strong stellar wind. Numerical simulations show that the shape of the light curve (and in particularly the widths of the minima) strongly…
Gravitational microlensing within the Galaxy offers the prospect of probing the details of distant stellar sources, as well as revealing the distribution of compact (and potentially non-luminous) masses along the line-of-sight. Recently, it…
We study the nucleosynthesis and the induced mixing during the merging of massive stars inside a common envelope. The systems of interest are close binaries, initially consisting of a massive red supergiant and a main-sequence companion of…
Globular clusters contain many stars with surface abundance patterns indicating contributions from hydrogen burning products, as seen in the anti-correlated elemental abundances of e.g. sodium and oxygen, and magnesium and aluminium.…
We study dynamical capture binary neutron star mergers as may arise in dense stellar regions such as globular clusters. Using general-relativistic hydrodynamics, we find that these mergers can result in the prompt collapse to a black hole…
Among more than 200 extrasolar planet candidates discovered to date, there is no known planet orbiting around normal binary stars. In this paper, we demonstrate that microlensing is a technique that can detect such planets. Microlensing…