[mesa-users] MESA binary capabilities

[Pablo Marchant]

Here go some answers:

1) The binary routines can work taking into account the full evolution of
both stars, or taking one as a point mass accretor. Right now though things
won't work if you try to load models from single stellar runs to startup
the binary, so I don't think there is a straightforward way to set up a
star + white dwarf system.

2) Look at 1)

3) Mesa takes into account effects that take out orbital angular momentum
from the system, such as magnetic braking, gravitational waves, and mass
loss, and solves or the orbital parameters from that. Check out the
subroutine get_jdot for more details.

4) It can, if you take the evolution with the secondary being a point mass.

Also, on the purpose of the recent restructuring, the idea was to unify the
code base that dealt with the different binary evolution scenarios present
before in the test cases (full binary, star+point mass and synch routines),
so now all of these can be ran using the same sources and just modifying
inlist parameters (and they're also now nicely built into a module thanks
to Bill). There are still some things I'm trying to sort out, particularly
related to rotation and stars misbehaving when they get close to break-up
speed, but I'm already making progress there.

Cheers!

On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 8:21 PM, Bill Paxton <paxton at kitp.ucsb.edu> wrote:

> Hi Pablo,
>
> These questions about mesa binaries are of general interest.
> Would you give brief answers and perhaps indicated where
> you are going with this as well as the recent restructuring.
>
> Thanks,
> Bill
>
>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> *From: *Manos Chatzopoulos <manolis at astro.as.utexas.edu>
> *Date: *June 21, 2013 11:18:13 AM PDT
> *To: *Bill Paxton <paxton at kitp.ucsb.edu>
> *Subject: **MESA binary capabilities*
>
> Hi Bill,
>
> I have a colleague here in UT who is interested in starting to use MESA
> to study binary evolution. So I have some general questions on the topic:
> 1) Can MESA do evolution of systems like Cataclysmic Variables?
> 2) Does it do the full evolution of the secondary star interior?
> 3) Can it calculate the evolution of the orbital characteristics? There
> will
> be angular momentum loss due to mass-transfer than will change
> the dynamics of the system, is there a recipe in MESA that handles all
> that?
> 4) Can the primary star be a neutron star, or even a black hole besides
> only
> just a white dwarf?
>
> Thanks a lot!
>
> Manos
>
> --
> Dr. Manos Chatzopoulos
> Department of Astronomy
> University of Texas at Austin
>
>
>


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