Abstract

Poster - Splinter General   (Kuppelsaal / virtual plenum)

Violent interactions of binary stars and the associated outbursts

Ondrej Pejcha
Charles University

One of the crucial formation channels of compact object binaries, including sources of gravitational waves, critically depends on violent binary interactions accompanied by the loss of mass, angular momentum, and energy ("common envelope" evolution - CEE). For decades, CEE has been a major unsolved problem in binary star astrophysics with most observations probing CEE only indirectly by looking at progenitor or remnant stellar populations and with multi-dimensional simulations limited by the large range of physical scales involved. Recently, the dynamical phase of the CEE has been associated with a class of transient brightenings called Luminous Red Novae (LRNe), which exhibit slow expansion velocities and copious formation of dust and molecules. LRNe offer us a new way to directly probe CEE. In this poster, I will show recent results from my group on multi-dimensional magneto/radiation-hydrodynamical simulations of LRNe and late phases of CEE, addressing issues such as the power source of the transient, inspiral dynamics of the two cores, and generation of magnetic fields.