[mesa-users] Binary capabilities on MESA

[Pablo Marchant]

Ehsan Moravveji just sent back this reply direcly to me so I'm including it
on the mailing list:
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HI Pablo.
You raised an interesting question. I am just about starting to read the
two rlo implementation.
For a kick of start, can you please tell me the difference between the two
test_suite examples, namely rlo and rlo_implicit?

Thanks.
Ehsan.
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Ehsan, I don't know the precise details of the implementation, but as far
as I know one uses an explicit method and the other and implicit one to
solve the mass transfer. As far as I know the implicit method should be
much more robust.

Also, you have to notice that the test suite that actually evolves both
stars together is on the test cases binary_rlo and binary_rlo_implicit, I
think the ones only with rlo evolve a single star under a certain mass
accretion.

On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 2:03 PM, Pablo Marchant <pamarca at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi! Last August at the MESA summer school we had a small session where we
> discussed the binary evolution capabilities of MESA. As far as I can
> remember, Bill Paxton said that the current implementation for binaries is
> more a "proof of concept" than a robust implementation (not his precise
> words but something on that line). In that sense, the current code has
> restrictions, as for instance only one star can be an accretor while the
> other one is set as the donor in a fixed way at the beggining of the
> simulation. Also, tidal torques are not implemented.
>
> Even though I'm not very experienced in FORTRAN, I've been skimming
> through the source code trying to understand where these things are done,
> but not to much avail. I've also been playing with the binary examples on
> the test suite (binary_rlo and binary_rlo_implicit, which have equal
> initial conditions but different implementations for mass transfer), but I
> have no idea if there's a simple way to output info on the binary system
> itself.
>
> So, going to the point ... I'm really interested on getting a robust
> implementation for binaries on MESA, so mostly I'd like to know more
> precisely what are the limitations of the current implementation and if
> it's part of the development roadmap to enhance this capability. In any
> case, I would not have problems on getting involved on actual development
> for this functionality.
>
> Cheers to all!
>
> --
> Pablo Marchant Campos
> M.Sc on Astrophysics, Universidad Católica de Chile
> PhD student, Argelander-Institut für Astronomie
>



-- 
Pablo Marchant Campos
M.Sc on Astrophysics, Universidad Católica de Chile
PhD student, Argelander-Institut für Astronomie
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