Related papers: On the source of viscosity in cool binary accretio…
The cosmic star formation rate is observed to drop sharply after redshift z=2. We use a large, cosmological, smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation to investigate how this decline is related to the evolution of gas accretion and to…
The inner region of the accretion disk around a magnetized star is subjected to magnetic torques that induce warping and precession of the disk. These torques arise from interactions between the stellar field and the induced electric…
In recent years a correlation between mass accretion rates onto new-born stars and their proto-planetary disc masses was detected in nearby young star-forming regions. Although such a correlation can be interpreted as due to…
Our recent theoretical work (Townsley and Bildsten 2002) on the thermal state of white dwarfs (WDs) in low mass transfer rate binaries allows us to predict the broadband colors of the binary from those of the WD and companion when the disk…
We argue that gravitational instability of typical protostellar disks is not a viable mechanism for the fragmentation into multiple systems -- binary stars, brown dwarf companions, or gas giant planets -- except at periods above roughly…
Volume complete sky surveys provide evidence for a binary origin for the formation of isolated white dwarfs with magnetic fields in excess of a MegaGauss. Interestingly, not a single high-field magnetic white dwarf has been found in a…
I suggest a spiral-in process by which a stellar companion graze the envelope of a giant star while both the orbital separation and the giant radius shrink simultaneously, and a close binary system is formed. The binary system might be…
Disk accretion onto stars leads to the formation of a Boundary Layer (BL) near the stellar surface where the disk makes contact with the star. Albeit a large fraction of the total luminosity of the system originates from this tiny layer…
The inner region of the accretion disk around a magnetized star (T Tauri star, white dwarf or neutron star) is subjected to magnetic torques that induce warping and precession of the disk. These torques arise from the interaction between…
More than half of all stars are part of binaries, and many form in a common circumbinary disc. The interaction with the binary shapes the disc to feature a large eccentric inner cavity and spirals in the inner disc. The shape of the…
For a slowly rotating non-magnetized white dwarf the accretion disk extends all the way to the star. Here the matter impacts and spreads towards the poles as new matter continuously piles up behind it. We have solved the 3d compressible…
The gravitational-wave and accretion driven evolution of neutron stars in low mass X-ray binaries and similar systems is analyzed, while the amplitude of the radiating perturbation (here assumed to be an r-mode) remains small. If most of…
We apply a model of dynamo-driven mass loss, magnetic braking and tidal friction to the evolution of stars with cool convective envelopes; in particular we apply it to binary stars where the combination of magnetic braking and tidal…
We have discovered that the brown dwarf WISEJ014656.66+423410.0 is a close binary (0.0875$\pm$0.0021 arcsec, 0.93$^{+0.12}_{-0.16}$ AU) from Keck laser guide star adaptive optics imaging. Our photometry for this system reveals that both…
We address the puzzling observational indications for very "cold" galactic discs at redshifts $z \gtrsim 3$, an epoch when discs are expected to be highly perturbed. Using a high-resolution cosmological zoom-in simulation, we identify such…
We aim to examine the detailed disc structure that arises in a misaligned binary system as a function of the disc aspect ratio h, viscosity parameter alpha, disc outer radius R, and binary inclination angle gamma_F. We also aim to examine…
We study the dynamical effects of gravitational focusing by a binary companion on winds from late-type stars. In particular, we investigate the mass transfer and formation of accretion disks around the secondary in detached systems…
We present results of a semi-analytic model (SAM) that includes cold accretion and a porosity-based prescription for star formation. We can recover the puzzling observational results of low $V/\sigma$ seen in various massive disk or…
Motivated by Genzel et al.'s observations of high-redshift star-forming galaxies, containing clumpy and turbulent rings or disks, we build a set of equations describing the dynamical evolution of gaseous disks with inclusion of star…
We revisit the idea that density-wave wakes of planets drive accretion in protostellar disks. The effects of many small planets can be represented as a viscosity if the wakes damp locally, but the viscosity is proportional to the damping…