13 papers
A Unified Ionization Framework for the Spectroscopic Diversity of Tidal Disruption Events
Lars L. Thomsen, Lixin Dai, Daniel Kasen +4
Optical tidal disruption events (TDEs) exhibit extremely broad emission lines (-) and are observationally classified into four spectroscopic typ…
Hydrodynamic Response of Mildly Evolved Common Envelope Donors in Luminous Red Novae
Tenley Hutchinson-Smith, Angela Twum, Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz
Luminous red novae trace unstable binary interactions in which common-envelope evolution can produce either a stellar merger or a surviving binary following envelope ejection. Rece…
Lithium Enrichment in a Subgiant Star with a Brown Dwarf Companion: A Planetary Engulfment Candidate
Brooke Kotten, Melinda Soares-Furtado, Ricardo Yarza +11
Theoretical models predict that subgiants within a narrow mass regime can retain detectable lithium enrichment signatures from planetary engulfment. We test this prediction using T…
The Landscape of Unstable Mass Transfer in Interacting Binaries and Its Imprint on the Population of Luminous Red Novae
Angela A. G. Twum, Alejandro Vigna-Gómez, Morgan MacLeod +4
A common-envelope (CE) phase occurs when a star engulfs its companion and is widely considered the primary channel for producing Luminous Red Novae (LRNe). In this study, we combin…
Chemical enrichment of metal-poor stars orbiting massive black hole companions
Alejandra Rosselli-Calderon, Julia Stewart, Sijing Shen +3
There are millions of undetected black holes wandering through our galaxy. Observatories like {\it Chandra}, LIGO, and more recently, {\it Gaia}, have provided valuable insights in…
Black Hole Survival Guide: Searching for Stars in the Galactic Center That Endure Partial Tidal Disruption
Rewa Clark Bush, Samantha C. Wu, Rosa Wallace Everson +3
Once per 10,000-100,000 years, an unlucky star may experience a close encounter with a supermassive black hole (SMBH), partially or fully tearing apart the star in an exceedingly b…