AN AMR STUDY OF THE COMMON-ENVELOPE PHASE OF BINARY EVOLUTION

By Paul M. Ricker, R. Taam. 2011

177 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The hydrodynamic evolution of the common-envelope (CE) phase of a low-mass binary composed of a 1.05 M☉ red giant and a 0.6 M☉ companion has been followed for five orbits of the system using a high-resolution method in three spatial dimensions. During the rapid inspiral phase, the interaction of the companion with the red giant's extended atmosphere causes about 25% of the CE to be ejected from the system, with mass continuing to be lost at the end of the simulation at a rate ∼2 M☉ yr−1. In the process the resulting loss of angular momentum and energy reduces the orbital separation by a factor of seven. After this inspiral phase the eccentricity of the orbit rapidly decreases with time. The gravitational drag dominates hydrodynamic drag at all times in the evolution, and the commonly used Bondi–Hoyle–Lyttleton prescription for estimating the accretion rate onto the companion significantly overestimates the true rate. On scales comparable to the orbital separation, the gas flow in the orbital plane in the vicinity of the two cores is subsonic with the gas nearly corotating with the red giant core and circulating about the red giant companion. On larger scales, 90% of the outflow is contained within 30° of the orbital plane, and the spiral shocks in this material leave an imprint on the density and velocity structure. Of the energy released by the inspiral of the cores, only about 25% goes toward ejection of the envelope.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/447177d58762233c8ef2038edc307c852f994a84

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Citations in the corpus

Dawes Review 6: The Impact of Companions on Stellar Evolution (2016, background): “The number of models of the CE phase has increased in the recent years, but they are still far from being predictive (e.g., Ricker & Taam, 2008; Passy et al., 2012a; Ricker & Taam, 2012; Ohlmann et al., 2016a; Staff et al., 2016a; Ohlmann et al., 2016b; Iaconi et al., 2016).”
Common envelope evolution: where we stand and how we can move forward (2012, methodology): “…is still dynamical, the commonly used Bondi–Hoyle–Lyttleton prescription for estimating the accretion rate onto the companion significantly overestimates the true rate (Ricker and Taam 2012), in which case the contribution of accretion to the energy budget could easily be negligible (see also Sect.”
Progenitors of gravitational wave mergers: binary evolution with the stellar grid-based code ComBinE (2018, background): “Nevertheless, studies in this direction still have difficulties ejecting the envelope and securing deep in-spiral (Taam & Sandquist 2000; Passy et al. 2012; Ricker & Taam 2012; Nandez et al. 2014; Ohlmann et al. 2016).”
Binary Population and Spectral Synthesis Version 2.1: Construction, Observational Verification, and New Results (2017, background): “…of CEE are less uncertain than they used to be, as a result of extensive hydrodynamic simulations in recent years (e.g. Passy et al. 2012; Ricker & Taam 2012; Nandez & Ivanova 2016; Ohlmann et al. 2016; Staff et al. 2016; Iaconi et al. 2017), although this work focuses on low mass (∼1–2…”
A PANCHROMATIC VIEW OF THE RESTLESS SN 2009ip REVEALS THE EXPLOSIVE EJECTION OF A MASSIVE STAR ENVELOPE (2013, background): “In this scenario, the mass loss is concentrated on the orbital plane of the binary (Ricker & Taam 2012), offering a natural explanation for the observed asymmetry (Section 7.4).”