Related papers: On the source of viscosity in cool binary accretio…
Using Spitzer Space Telescope photometric observations of the eclipsing, interacting binary WZ Sge, we have discovered that the accretion disk is far more complex than previously believed. Our 4.5 and 8 micron time series observations…
I discuss some of what is known and unknown about the behavior of black hole binary systems in the quiescent accretion state. Quiescence is important for several reasons: 1) the dominance of the companion star in the optical and IR…
Since their initial discovery, the origin of isolated white dwarfs (WDs) with magnetic fields in excess of $\sim$1 MG has remained a mystery. Recently, the formation of these high-field magnetic WDs has been observationally linked to strong…
For more than half a century, the puzzling W-type phenomenon in contact binaries has challenged astrophysicists. In these systems, the less massive component exhibits a higher surface temperature than its more massive companion, which is a…
We investigate the thermal stability of optically thin, two-temperature, radiative cooling-dominated accretion disks. Our linear analysis shows that the disk is thermally unstable without magnetic fields, which agrees with previous…
In mass-transferring wide binary stellar systems, the companion star can capture some of the mass released in wind by the primary evolved star, and form an accretion disk. Such accretion disks could evolve to form disks of comparable…
The role of convection in the gas-dust accretion disk around a young star is studied. The evolution of a Keplerian disk is modeled using the Pringle equation, which describes the time variations of the surface density under the action of…
Accretion disks with masses ~0.001-0.1 Msun form during the merger of neutron star (NS)-NS and black hole-NS binaries. Initially, such hyper-accreting disks cool efficiently by neutrino emission and their composition is driven neutron-rich…
Brown dwarfs straddle the mass range transition from planetary to stellar objects. There is a relative paucity of brown dwarfs companions around FGKM stars compared to exoplanets for orbital periods less than a few years, but most of the…
Disk accretion onto a magnetized star occurs in a variety of astrophysical contexts, from young stars to X-ray pulsars. The magnetohydrodynamic interaction between the stellar field and the accreting matter can have a strong effect on the…
The search for binarity in AGB stars is of critical importance for our understanding of how planetary nebulae acquire the dazzling variety of aspherical shapes which characterises this class. However, detecting binary companions in such…
Isolated magnetic white dwarfs have field strengths ranging from kilogauss to gigagauss. However, the origin of the magnetic field has not been hitherto elucidated. Whether these fields are fossil, hence the remnants of original weak…
Planets and other low-mass binary companions to stars face a variety of potential fates as their host stars move off the main sequence and grow to subgiants and giants. Stellar mass loss tends to make orbits expand, and tidal torques tend…
Accretion discs are present around both stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binaries and supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei. A wide variety of circumstantial evidence implies that many of these discs are warped. The standard…
Recurring outbursts associated with matter flowing onto compact stellar remnants (black-holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs) in close binary systems, provide strong test beds for constraining the poorly understood accretion process. The…
We consider viscous rotating accretion flows in which most of the viscously dissipated energy is stored as entropy rather than being radiated. Such advection-dominated flows may occur when the optical depth is either very small or very…
Although the internal structure of white dwarfs is considered to be generally well understood, the source and entity of viscosity is still very uncertain. We propose here to study white dwarf viscous properties using short period (< 1 hr),…
A large fraction of stars are in binary systems, yet the evolution of proto-planetary discs in binaries has been little explored from the theoretical side. In this paper we investigate the evolution of the discs surrounding the primary and…
Recent observations show that chromospheric activity in late-M and L dwarfs is much lower than in the earlier M types, in spite of comparatively rapid rotation. We investigate the possibility that this drop-off in activity results from the…
We carry out the first robust numerical simulation of accretion flows on a weakly magnetized neutron star using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH). We follow the Two-Component Advective Flow (TCAF) paradigm for black holes, and focus…