Related papers: Violent Stellar Merger Model for Transient Events
Neutron star (NS) mergers where both stars have negligible spins are commonly considered as the most likely ``standard'' case. In globular clusters, however, the majority of NSs have been spun up to millisecond (ms) periods and, based on…
This chapter describes the current state of models of individual blue stragglers. Stellar collisions, binary mergers (or coalescence), and partial or ongoing mass transfer have all been studied in some detail. The products of stellar…
The recent detection of GW190521 stimulated ideas on how to populate the predicted black hole pair-instability mass gap. One proposed scenario is the dynamical merger of two stars below the pair instability regime forming a star with a…
Physical collisions between stars occur frequently in dense star clusters, either via close encounters between two single stars, or during strong dynamical interactions involving binary stars. Here we study stellar collisions that occur…
The runaway merger scenario is one of the most promising mechanisms to explain the formation of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) in young dense star clusters (SCs). On the other hand, the massive stars that participate in the runaway…
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…
Some binary stars experience common envelope evolution, which is accompanied by drastic loss of angular momentum, mass, and orbital energy and which leaves behind close binaries often involving at least one white dwarf, neutron star, or…
Recent detailed observations of the radio-loud quasar 3C 186 indicate the possibility that a supermassive recoiling black hole is moving away from the host galaxy at a speed of nearly 2100km/s. If this is the case, we can model the mass…
We calculate the projected two point correlation function for samples of luminous and massive galaxies in the COMBO-17 photometric redshift survey, focusing particularly on the amplitude of the correlation function at small projected radii…
In the cores of young dense star clusters repeated stellar collisions involving the same object can occur, which has been suggested to lead to the formation of an intermediate-mass black hole. In order to verify this scenario we compute the…
Mergers between galaxy clusters are an important stage in the formation of the large-scale structure of the Universe. Some of the mergers show a spectacular bow shock that formed as a result of recent passage of a smaller cluster through a…
The mapping between dark matter halo mass, galaxy stellar mass, and galaxy cold gas mass is not a simple linear relation, but is influenced by a wide array of galaxy formation processes. We implement observationally-normalized relations…
The merger of close binary systems containing two neutron stars should produce a burst of gravitational waves, as predicted by the theory of general relativity. A reliable estimate of the double-neutron-star merger rate in the Galaxy is…
We perform a comprehensive estimate of the frequency of galaxy mergers and their impact on star formation over z~0.24--0.80 (lookback time T_b~3--7 Gyr) using 3698 (M*>=1e9 Msun) galaxies with GEMS HST, COMBO-17, and Spitzer data. Our…
We discuss the main observational facts on the eruption of V838 Monocerotis in terms of possible outburst mechanisms. We conclude that the stellar merger scenario is the only one, which can consistently explain the observations.
We have developed an effective simulation method and applied it to the problem of the accretion of very dense secondary companions by tenuous primaries. We have studied the accretion of objects of varying luminosity ratios, with sizes and…
We explore the galaxy-galaxy merger rate with the empirical model for galaxy formation, Emerge. On average, we find that between $2$ per cent and $20$ per cent of massive galaxies ($\log_{10}(m_{*}/M_{\odot}) \geq 10.3$) will experience a…
In dense stellar clusters like galactic nuclei and globular clusters stellar densities are so high that stars might physically collide with each other. In galactic nuclei the energy and power output can be close, and even exceed, to those…
We propose that the energy source of the outburst of V838 Mon and similar objects is an accretion event, i.e., gravitational energy rather than thermonuclear runaway. We show that the merger of two main sequence stars, of masses 1.5 Mo and…
Binary neutron-star mergers and heavy-ion collisions are related through the properties of the hot and dense nuclear matter formed during these extreme events. In particular, low-energy heavy-ion collisions offer exciting prospects to…