Publications (57)
The Evolution of Massive Binary Stars
Pablo Marchant, Julia Bodensteiner
Massive stars play a major role in the evolution of their host galaxies, and serve as important probes of the distant Universe. It has been established that the majority of massive…
The initial spin distribution of B-type stars revealed by the split main sequences of young star clusters
Chen Wang, Ben Hastings, Abel Schootemeijer +6
Spectroscopic observations of stars in young open clusters have revealed evidence for a dichotomous distribution of stellar rotational velocities, with 10-30% of stars rotating slo…
Good things always come in 3s: trimodality in the binary black-hole chirp-mass distribution supports bimodal black-hole formation
Reinhold Willcox, Fabian R. N. Schneider, Eva Laplace +7
The latest GWTC-4 release from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaboration nearly doubles the known population of double compact object mergers and reveals a new trimodal structure in…
Binary Black Hole Formation with Detailed Modeling: Stable Mass Transfer Leads to Lower Merger Rates
Monica Gallegos-Garcia, Christopher P L Berry, Pablo Marchant +1
Rapid binary population synthesis codes are often used to investigate the evolution of compact-object binaries. They typically rely on analytical fits of single-star evolutionary t…
Pulsational pair-instability supernovae in very close binaries
Pablo Marchant, Mathieu Renzo, Robert Farmer +4
Pair-instability and pulsational pair-instability supernovae (PPISN) have not been unambiguously observed so far. They are, however, promising candidates for the progenitors of the…
A New Model of Roche-lobe Overflow for Short-Period Gaseous Planets and Binary Stars
Brian Jackson, Phil Arras, Kaloyan Penev +2
Some close-in gaseous exoplanets are nearly in Roche-lobe contact, and previous studies show tidal decay can drive hot Jupiters into contact during the main sequence of their host…
A spectroscopic multiplicity survey of Galactic Wolf-Rayet stars. I. The northern WC sequence
Karan Dsilva, Tomer Shenar, Hugues Sana +1
It is now well established that the majority of massive stars reside in multiple systems. However, the effect of multiplicity is not sufficiently understood, resulting in a plethor…
Chemically Homogeneous Evolution: A rapid population synthesis approach
Jeff Riley, Ilya Mandel, Pablo Marchant +5
We explore chemically homogeneous evolution (CHE) as a formation channel for massive merging binary black holes (BBHs). We develop methods to include CHE in a rapid binary populati…
Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA): Convective Boundaries, Element Diffusion, and Massive Star Explosions
Bill Paxton, Josiah Schwab, Evan B. Bauer +10
We update the capabilities of the software instrument Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA) and enhance its ease of use and availability. Our new approach to locat…
Constraints on the Progenitor System of SN 2016gkg from a Comprehensive Statistical Analysis
Niharika Sravan, Pablo Marchant, Vassiliki Kalogera +1
Type IIb supernovae (SNe) present a unique opportunity for understanding the progenitors of stripped-envelope (SE) SNe as the stellar progenitor of several Type IIb SNe have been i…
Ultra-luminous X-ray sources and neutron-star-black-hole mergers from very massive close binaries at low metallicity
Pablo Marchant, Norbert Langer, Philipp Podsiadlowski +4
Gravitational waves from the binary black hole (BH) merger GW150914 may enlighten our understanding of ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs), as BHs>30Msun can reach luminosities>4x1…
Evolution of binary stars
Pablo Marchant
Binary stars are pairs of stars that are gravitationally bound, providing in some cases accurate measurements of their masses and radii. As such, they serve as excellent testbeds f…
Probing the progenitors of spinning binary black-hole mergers with long gamma-ray bursts
Simone S. Bavera, Tassos Fragos, Emmanouil Zapartas +15
Long-duration gamma-ray bursts are thought to be associated with the core-collapse of massive, rapidly spinning stars and the formation of black holes. However, efficient angular m…
Forming merging double compact objects with stable mass transfer
Annachiara Picco, Pablo Marchant, Hugues Sana +1
Merging double compact objects (CO) represent the inferred sources of every detected gravitational wave (GW) signal, thus modeling their progenitors is important to constrain stell…
Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA): Pulsating Variable Stars, Rotation, Convective Boundaries, and Energy Conservation
Bill Paxton, R. Smolec, Josiah Schwab +14
We update the capabilities of the open-knowledge software instrument Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA). RSP is a new functionality in MESAstar that models the…
Testing eccentricity pumping mechanisms to model eccentric long period sdB binaries with MESA
Joris Vos, Roy Ãstensen, Pablo Marchant +1
Hot subdwarf-B stars in long-period binaries are found to be on eccentric orbits, even though current binary-evolution theory predicts those objects to be circularised before the o…
Stellar mergers as the origin of the blue main-sequence band in young star clusters
Chen Wang, Norbert Langer, Abel Schootemeijer +10
Recent high-quality Hubble Space Telescope (HST) photometry shows that the main sequences (MS) stars of young star clusters form two discrete components in the color-magnitude diag…
X-Shooting ULLYSES: Massive Stars at Low Metallicity
Jorick S. Vink, Paul Crowther, Alex Fullerton +20
The Hubble Space Telescope has devoted 500 orbits to observing 250 massive stars with low metallicity in the ultraviolet (UV) range within the framework of the ULLYSES program. The…
Stability of Hall equilibria in neutron star crusts
Pablo Marchant, Andreas Reisenegger, Juan Alejandro Valdivia +1
In the solid crusts of neutron stars, the advection of the magnetic field by the current-carrying electrons, an effect known as Hall drift, should play a very important role as the…
Stability of magnetic fields in non-barotropic stars: an analytic treatment
Taner Akgün, Andreas Reisenegger, Alpha Mastrano +1
Magnetic fields in upper main-sequence stars, white dwarfs, and neutron stars are known to persist for timescales comparable to their lifetimes. From a theoretical perspective this…
Revisiting the Flowers-Ruderman instability of magnetic stars
Pablo Marchant, Andreas Reisenegger, Taner Akgün
In 1977, Flowers and Ruderman described a perturbation that destabilises a purely dipolar magnetic field in a fluid star. They considered the effect of cutting the star in half alo…
Modeling contact binaries, III. Properties of a population of close, massive binaries
Matthias Fabry, Pablo Marchant, Norbert Langer +1
Among massive stars, binary interaction is the rule rather than the exception. The closest binaries, those with periods of less than about 10 days, undergo mass transfer during cor…
The Science of the Einstein Telescope
Adrian Abac, Raul Abramo, Simone Albanesi +485
Einstein Telescope (ET) is the European project for a gravitational-wave (GW) observatory of third-generation. In this paper we present a comprehensive discussion of its science ob…
ALMA detection of CO rotational line emission in red supergiant stars of the massive young star cluster RSGC1 -- Determination of a new mass-loss rate prescription for red supergiants
Leen Decin, Anita M. S. Richards, Pablo Marchant +1
[Abridged] Aim: We aim to derive a new mass-loss rate prescription for RSGs that is not afflicted with some uncertainties inherent in preceding studies. Methods: We have observed C…
No signature of the orbital motion of a putative 70 solar mass black hole in LB-1
Michael Abdul-Masih, Gareth Banyard, Julia Bodensteiner +13
Liu et al. (2019) recently reported the detection of a 68 [+11/-13] solar mass (Msun) black hole (BH) paired with an 8.2 [+0.9/-1.2] Msun B-type sub-giant star in the 78.9-day spec…
Detailed evolutionary models of massive contact binaries: I. Model grids and synthetic populations for the Magellanic Clouds
Athira Menon, Norbert Langer, Selma E. de Mink +8
The majority of close massive binary stars with initial periods of a few days experience a contact phase, in which both stars overflow their Roche lobes simultaneously. We perform…
The Tarantula Massive Binary Monitoring VI: Characterisation of hidden companions in 51 single-lined O-type binaries, a flat mass-ratio distribution, and black-hole binary candidates
Tomer Shenar, Hugues Sana, Laurent Mahy +10
We aim to hunt for massive binaries hosting a black hole companion (OB+BH) and establish the natal mass-ratio distribution of massive stars at the subsolar metallicity environment…
Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA): Time-Dependent Convection, Energy Conservation, Automatic Differentiation, and Infrastructure
Adam S. Jermyn, Evan B. Bauer, Josiah Schwab +19
We update the capabilities of the open-knowledge software instrument Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA). The new auto_diff module implements automatic different…
BAT99 126: A multiple Wolf-Rayet system in the Large Magellanic Cloud with a massive near-contact binary
Soetkin Janssens, Tomer Shenar, Laurent Mahy +3
BAT99 126 is a multiple system in the Large Magellanic Cloud containing a Wolf-Rayet (WR) star, which has a reported spectroscopic (orbital) period of 25.5 days and a photometric (…
Analytic approximations for massive close post-mass transfer binary systems
Christoph Schürmann, Norbert Langer, Joana A. Kramer +3
Massive binary evolution models are needed to predict massive star populations in star forming galaxies, the supernova diversity, and the number and properties of gravitational wav…
The Nature of Unseen Companions in Massive Single-Line Spectroscopic Binaries
Hugues Sana, Michael Abdul-Masih, Gareth Banyard +14
Massive stars are predominantly found in binaries and higher order multiples. While the period and eccentricity distributions of OB stars are now well established across different…
One Channel to Rule Them All? Constraining the Origins of Binary Black Holes using Multiple Formation Pathways
Michael Zevin, Simone S. Bavera, Christopher P. L. Berry +7
The second LIGO-Virgo catalog of gravitational wave transients has more than quadrupled the observational sample of binary black holes. We analyze this catalog using a suite of fiv…
Eclipses of continuous gravitational waves as a probe of stellar structure
Pablo Marchant, Katelyn Breivik, Christopher P. L. Berry +2
Although gravitational waves only interact weakly with matter, their propagation is affected by a gravitational potential. If a gravitational wave source is eclipsed by a star, mea…
Nitrogen rises to the top: evidence of enhanced mixing in very massive stars
Pablo Marchant, Tomer Shenar
Recent observations of young galaxies in the high-redshift Universe reveal signs of early enrichment of nitrogen. Extremely massive stars () with st…
The impact of mass-transfer physics on the observable properties of field binary black hole populations
Simone S. Bavera, Tassos Fragos, Michael Zevin +13
We study the impact of mass-transfer physics on the observable properties of binary black hole populations formed through isolated binary evolution. We investigate the impact of ma…
Constraining the overcontact phase in massive binary evolution -- III. Period stability of known B+B and O+B overcontact systems
Jasmine Vrancken, Michael Abdul-Masih, Ana Escorza +3
Binary systems play a crucial role in massive star evolution. Systems composed of B-type and O-type stars are of particular interest due to their potential to lead to very energeti…
Constraining the overcontact phase in massive binary evolution -- II. Period stability of known O+O overcontact systems
Michael Abdul-Masih, Ana Escorza, Athira Menon +2
Given that mergers are often invoked to explain many exotic phenomena in massive star evolution, understanding the evolutionary phase directly preceding a merger, the overcontact p…
The role of mass transfer and common envelope evolution in the formation of merging binary black holes
Pablo Marchant, Kaliroë M. W. Pappas, Monica Gallegos-Garcia +4
As the number of observed merging binary black holes (BHs) grows, accurate models are required to disentangle multiple formation channels. In models with isolated binaries, importa…
Luminous supernovae associated with ultra-long gamma-ray bursts from hydrogen-free progenitors extended by pulsational pair-instability
Takashi J. Moriya, Pablo Marchant, Sergei I. Blinnikov
We show that the luminous supernovae (SNe) associated with ultra-long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) can be related to the slow cooling from the explosions of hydrogen-free progenitors ex…
Progenitors of Type IIb Supernovae: I. Evolutionary Pathways and Rates
Niharika Sravan, Pablo Marchant, Vassiliki Kalogera
Type IIb supernovae (SNe) are important candidates to understand mechanisms that drive the stripping of stripped-envelope (SE) supernova (SN) progenitors. While binary interactions…
A new route towards merging massive black holes
Pablo Marchant, Norbert Langer, Philipp Podsiadlowski +2
Recent advances in gravitational-wave astronomy make the direct detection of gravitational waves from the merger of two stellar-mass compact objects a realistic prospect. Evolution…
Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA): Binaries, Pulsations, and Explosions
Bill Paxton, Pablo Marchant, Josiah Schwab +10
We substantially update the capabilities of the open-source software instrument Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA). MESA can now simultaneously evolve an intera…
Tidally-driven Roche-Lobe Overflow of Hot Jupiters with MESA
Francesca Valsecchi, Saul Rappaport, Frederic A. Rasio +2
Many exoplanets have now been detected in orbits with ultra-short periods, very close to the Roche limit. Building upon our previous work, we study the possibility that mass loss t…
The impact of stellar rotation on the black hole mass-gap from pair-instability supernovae
Pablo Marchant, Takashi Moriya
Models of pair-instability supernovae (PISNe) predict a gap in black hole (BH) masses between , which is referred to as the upper BH mass-gap. With the a…
Mergers via failed common envelope as a route towards intermediate-mass stripped stars
Annachiara Picco, Pablo Marchant, Daniel Pauli +1
Stripped stars are a common product of binary stellar systems and span a wide mass range from Wolf-Rayet stars to hot subdwarfs and helium white dwarfs. The recent discovery of int…
Magnetohydrodynamic equilibria in barotropic stars
Cristobal Armaza, Andreas Reisenegger, Juan Alejandro Valdivia +1
Although barotropic matter does not constitute a realistic model for magnetic stars, it would be interesting to confirm a recent conjecture that states that magnetized stars with a…
Cosmic Rates of Black Hole Mergers and Pair-Instability Supernovae from Chemically Homogeneous Binary Evolution
Lise du Buisson, Pablo Marchant, Philipp Podsiadlowski +7
During the first three observing runs of the Advanced gravitational-wave detector network, the LIGO/Virgo collaboration detected several black hole binary (BHBH) mergers. As the po…
Active Learning for Computationally Efficient Distribution of Binary Evolution Simulations
Kyle Akira Rocha, Jeff J. Andrews, Christopher P. L. Berry +13
Binary stars undergo a variety of interactions and evolutionary phases, critical for predicting and explaining observed properties. Binary population synthesis with full stellar-st…
AM Canum Venaticorum Progenitors with Helium Star Donors and the resultant Explosions
Jared Brooks, Lars Bildsten, Pablo Marchant +1
We explore the outcome of mass transfer via Roche lobe overflow (RLOF) of pure helium burning stars in close binaries with white dwarfs (WDs). The…
An upper limit on the spins of merging binary black holes formed through binary evolution
Pablo Marchant, Philipp Podsiadlowski, Ilya Mandel
As gravitational wave detectors improve, observations of black hole (BH) mergers will provide the joint distribution of their masses and spins. This will be a critical benchmark to…
Modeling contact binaries, II. The effect of energy transfer
Matthias Fabry, Pablo Marchant, Norbert Langer +1
Context. It is common for massive stars to engage in binary interaction. In close binaries, the components can enter a contact phase, where both stars overflow their respective Roc…
Models of low-mass helium white dwarfs including gravitational settling, thermal and chemical diffusion, and rotational mixing
Alina Istrate, Pablo Marchant, Thomas M. Tauris +3
A large number of extremely low-mass helium white dwarfs (ELM WDs) have been discovered in recent years. The majority of them are found in close binary systems suggesting they are…
An X-ray quiet black hole born with a negligible kick in a massive binary within the Large Magellanic Cloud
Tomer Shenar, Hugues Sana, Laurent Mahy +35
Stellar-mass black holes are the final remnants of stars born with more than 15 solar masses. Billions are expected to reside in the Local Group, yet only few are known, mostly det…
On the Origin of Black Hole Spin in High-mass X-Ray Binaries
Ying Qin, Pablo Marchant, Tassos Fragos +2
Black hole (BH) spins in low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) cover a range of values that can be explained by accretion after BH birth. In contrast, the three BH spin measurements in h…
Constraining the Overcontact Phase in Massive Binary Evolution I. Mixing in V382 Cyg, VFTS 352, and OGLE SMC-SC10 108086
Michael Abdul-Masih, Hugues Sana, Calum Hawcroft +10
As potential progenitors of several exotic phenomena including gravitational wave sources, magnetic stars, and Be stars, close massive binary systems probe a crucial area of the pa…
Effects of close binary evolution on the main-sequence morphology of young star clusters
Chen Wang, Norbert Langer, Abel Schootemeijer +4
Star clusters are the building blocks of galaxies. They are composed of stars of nearly equal age and chemical composition, allowing us to use them as chronometers and as testbeds…
Progenitors of Type IIb Supernovae: II. Observable Properties
Niharika Sravan, Pablo Marchant, Vassiliki Kalogera +2
Type IIb supernovae (SNe IIb) present a unique opportunity for investigating the evolutionary channels and mechanisms governing the evolution of stripped-envelope SN progenitors du…