Abstract
The discovery via gravitational waves of binary black hole systems with total masses greater than 60M☉ has raised interesting questions for stellar evolution theory. Among the most promising formation channels for these systems is one involving a common envelope binary containing a low metallicity, core helium burning star with mass ∼ 80 − 90M☉ and a black hole with mass ∼ 30 − 40M☉. For this channel to be viable, the common envelope binary must eject more than half the giant star's mass and reduce its orbital separation by as much as a factor of 80. We discuss issues faced in numerically simulating the common envelope evolution of such systems and present a 3D AMR simulation of the dynamical inspiral of a low-metallicity red supergiant with a massive black hole companion.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 449-454 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union |
| Volume | 14 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 1 2018 |
Funding
PMR acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation under grant AST 14-13367, as well as the hospitality of the Academia Sinica Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics during a sabbatical visit. Portions of this work were completed at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, where it was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant NSF PHY-1125915. FLASH was developed and is maintained largely by the DOE-supported Flash Center for Computational Science at the University of Chicago. Simulations were carried out using XSEDE resources at the Texas Advanced Computing Center under allocation TG-AST040034N.
Keywords
- hydrodynamics
- stars: binaries: close
- stars: evolution
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Space and Planetary Science