Stellar collisions during binary-binary and binary-single star interactions

2004/01/31 by J. M. Fregeau, P. Cheung, S. F. Portegies Zwart +1 · 14 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Binary star #Collision #Context (archaeology) #Globular cluster #RADIUS #Star cluster #Stars #Stellar dynamics #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2004.07914.x

published as Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 352 (2004) 1 · Accepted for publication in MNRAS; 29 pages, 22 figures, 7 tables

arxiv created 2004/05/20 · openalex publication_date 2004/07/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Physical collisions between stars occur frequently in dense star clusters, either via close encounters between two single stars, or during strong dynamical interactions involving binary stars. Here we study stellar collisions that occur during binary–single and binary–binary interactions, by performing numerical scattering experiments. Our results include cross-sections, branching ratios and sample distributions of parameters for various outcomes. For interactions of hard binaries containing main-sequence stars, we find that the normalized cross-section for at least one collision to occur (between any two of the four stars involved) is essentially unity, and that the probability of collisions involving more than two stars is significant. Hydrodynamic calculations have shown that the effective radius of a collision product can be 2–30 times larger than the normal main-sequence radius for a star of the same total mass. We study the effect of this expansion, and find that it increases the probability of further collisions considerably. We discuss these results in the context of recent observations of blue stragglers in globular clusters with masses exceeding twice the main-sequence turn-off mass. We also present Fewbody, a new, freely available numerical toolkit for simulating small-N gravitational dynamics that is particularly suited to performing scattering experiments.

Citations

• A new outcome of binary--binary scattering
• Stellar collisions in globular clusters and the blue straggler problem
• Blue Straggler Stars: The Spectacular Population in M80
• Blue Straggler Stars: A Direct Comparison of Star Counts and Population Ratios in Six Galactic Globular Clusters
• A Remarkable Periodic Solution of the Three-Body Problem in the Case of Equal Masses

Cited by

• The chaotic four-body problem in Newtonian gravity– I. Identical point-particles
• The fingerprint of binary intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters: suprathermal stars and angular momentum alignment
• Small-N collisional dynamics – II. Roaming the realm of not-so-small-N
• Dynamical equivalence, the origin of the Galactic field stellar and binary population, and the initial radius–mass relation of embedded clusters
• Post-Newtonian dynamics in dense star clusters: Binary black holes in the LISA band
• An Unexpected Detection of Bifurcated Blue Straggler Sequences in the Young Globular Cluster NGC 2173∗
• Formation and evolution of compact binaries in globular clusters - I. Binaries with white dwarfs
• Massive Black Hole Binaries from Collisional Runaways
• On the relationship between metallicity distributions of globular clusters and of circumgalactic gas
• The secular tidal disruption of stars by low-mass Supermassive Black Holes secondaries in galactic nuclei
• Formation of Ultracompact X-Ray Binaries in Dense Star Clusters
• Dynamical Interactions of Planetary Systems in Dense Stellar Environments
• Calibrating the binary black hole population in nuclear star clusters through tidal disruption events
• Probing the Nature of the G1 Clump Stellar Overdensity in the Outskirts of M31