Abstract
Most massive stars are members of a binary or a higher-order stellar system, where the presence of a binary companion can decisively alter their evolution via binary interactions. Interacting binaries are also important astrophysical laboratories for the study of compact objects. Binary population synthesis studies have been used extensively over the last two decades to interpret observations of compact-object binaries and to decipher the physical processes that lead to their formation. Here, we present POSYDON, a novel, publicly available, binary population synthesis code that incorporates full stellar structure and binary-evolution modeling, using the MESA code, throughout the whole evolution of the binaries. The use of POSYDON enables the self-consistent treatment of physical processes in stellar and binary evolution, including: realistic mass-transfer calculations and assessment of stability, internal angular-momentum transport and tides, stellar core sizes, mass-transfer rates, and orbital periods. This paper describes the detailed methodology and implementation of POSYDON, including the assumed physics of stellar and binary evolution, the extensive grids of detailed single- and binary-star models, the postprocessing, classification, and interpolation methods we developed for use with the grids, and the treatment of evolutionary phases that are not based on precalculated grids. The first version of POSYDON targets binaries with massive primary stars (potential progenitors of neutron stars or black holes) at solar metallicity.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 45 |
| Journal | Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series |
| Volume | 264 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 1 2023 |
Funding
The computations were performed at Northwestern University on the Trident computer cluster (funded by the GBMF8477 award) and at the University of Geneva on the Baobab and Yggdrasil computer clusters. This research was supported in part through the computational resources and staff contributions provided for the Quest high-performance computing facility at Northwestern University, which is jointly supported by the Office of the Provost, the Office for Research, and Northwestern University Information Technology. We thank Corinne Charbonnel, Alex de Koter, Ilya Mandel, Pablo Marchant, Georges Meynet, Fred Rasio, Yorick Vink, and Andreas Zezas, for valuable discussions on several aspects stellar- and binary-evolution physics; Aldo Batta, Monica Gallegos-Garcia, Samuel Imperato, Chase Kimball, and Maxime Rambosson for contributing to the code base of the project, and Margaret Lazzarini and Mathieu Renzo for testing early development versions of the code and providing feedback. The POSYDON project is supported primarily by two sources: a Swiss National Science Foundation Professorship grant (PI Fragos, project No. PP00P2 176868) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (PI Kalogera, grant award GBMF8477). The collaboration was also supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie RISE action, grant agreement Nos. 691164 (ASTROSTAT) and 873089 (ASTROSTAT-II). Individual team members were supported by additional sources: J.J.A. acknowledges funding from Northwestern University through a CIERA Postdoctoral Fellowship, C.P.L.B. acknowledges support by the CIERA Board of Visitors Research Professorship, and S.C. through CIERA as a Computational Specialist. V.K. was partially supported through a CIFAR Senior Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. K.K. and E.Z. were partially supported by the Federal Commission for Scholarships for Foreign Students for the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship (ESKAS No. 2021.0277 and ESKAS No. 2019.0091, respectively). Y.Q. acknowledges funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant P2GEP2_188242). D.M. and K.R. thank the LSSTC Data Science Fellowship Program, which is funded by LSSTCorporation, NSF Cybertraining grant No. 1829740, the Brinson Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; their participation in the program has benefited this work. Z.X. was supported by the Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC). M.Z. was supported as an IDEAS Fellow, through the NRT IDEAS program, a research traineeship program supported by the National Science Foundation (PI Kalogera, award DGE-1450006).
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Space and Planetary Science