Common Envelope Wind Tunnel: Range of Applicability and Self-similarity in Realistic Stellar Envelopes

  • Everson R
  • MacLeod M
  • De S
  • et al.
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Abstract

Common envelope evolution, the key orbital tightening phase of the traditional formation channel for close binaries, is a multistage process that presents many challenges to the establishment of a fully descriptive, predictive theoretical framework. In an approach complementary to global 3D hydrodynamical modeling, we explore the range of applicability for a simplified drag formalism that incorporates the results of local hydrodynamic “wind tunnel” simulations into a semi-analytical framework in the treatment of the common envelope dynamical inspiral phase using a library of realistic giant branch stellar models across the low, intermediate, and high-mass regimes. In terms of a small number of key dimensionless parameters, we characterize a wide range of common envelope events, revealing the broad range of applicability of the drag formalism as well its self-similar nature across mass regimes and ages. Limitations arising from global binary properties and local structural quantities are discussed together with the opportunity for a general prescriptive application for this formalism.

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Everson, R. W., MacLeod, M., De, S., Macias, P., & Ramirez-Ruiz, E. (2020). Common Envelope Wind Tunnel: Range of Applicability and Self-similarity in Realistic Stellar Envelopes. The Astrophysical Journal, 899(1), 77. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aba75c

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