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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/47730
- N-body binary evolution
- Hurley, Jarrod R.
- It has long been recognized that binary stars represent a significant and important population within a star cluster and are present from the time of formation (Hut et al. 1992). As such, binary stars have been included in Nbody models of star cluster evolution for quite some time (Heggie & Aarseth 1992, for example). However, these early models focused only on the dynamical evolution of binaries – orbital changes resulting from encounters with other cluster stars. It was not until the emergence of rapid binary evolution algorithms (also called population synthesis codes: Tout et al. 1997; Yungelson et al. 1995) that facets of internal binary evolution such as mass-transfer were followed in N-body codes. This chapter provides a description of how binary evolution is treated in NBODY4 and NBODY6 and what is included in the algorithm. It follows closely on from the overview of N-body stellar evolution given in Chapter 10 and the theory of binary stars presented in Chapter 11, so it is strongly suggested that these are read beforehand. The material in this chapter does not deal with dynamical considerations, such as the transformation of the two-body orbital elements to regularized variables for a more accurate treatment of close encounters, the integration of hierarchical subsystems, and gravitational perturbations of binary orbits. These are covered in Chapters 1 and 3 as well as comprehensively in Aarseth (2003).
- Publication type
- Book chapter
- Research centre
- Swinburne University of Technology. Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies. Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing
- Lecture notes in physics: the Cambridge N-Body lectures / Sverre J. Aarseth, Christopher A. Tout and Rosemary A. Mardling (eds.), Vol. 760, chapter 12, pp. 321-332
- Publication year
- Binary evolution; Binary stars; N-body models; Stellar evolution
- 0075-8450 (series ISSN)
- 9781402084300, 1402084307
- Publisher URL
- Copyright © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008.
- Peer reviewed