[Mesa-users] Artificially inflating a star

[James Wild]

Hi,

I'm trying to simulate a full CV evolutionary track, based on the work
by Paxton
et.al. (2015)
<https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015ApJS..220...15P/abstract>, similar
to this Pala (2017) paper
<https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017MNRAS.466.2855P/abstract>. Their
inlists are provided on cococubed, so make for a good jumping off point.
However, I'd like to make the empirical corrections that Knigge (2011)
<https://arxiv.org/abs/1102.2440> make in their simulations, which includes
modifying the radius of the M dwarf donor star by about 10% to account for
both the generally underestimated radii of low mass main sequence stars,
and the non-spherical geometry of the Roche Lobes

>From what I understand, the radius of a star in mesa is an observable
quantity, calculated from other variables, rather than something that can
be modified directly by the user, but I'm sure there will be some way to
force the code to do this. I suspect that the non-spherical Roche geometry
is already accounted for in the mass transfer code, but the underestimation
of the main sequence radii can vary between 1-5%.

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with the codebase to do this while
being sure I'm not breaking anything important, what might the best
approach be here?

Thanks for your time,
James Wild.
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