activity
20242026
collaborators

11 papers

astro-ph.EP2026

Atmospheric Signatures of Common Envelope Evolution in White Dwarf Planets

Sydney Jenkins, Andrew Vanderburg, James Mang +4

The majority of confirmed exoplanets orbit within 1 au of a main-sequence (MS) star. When their stellar hosts evolve off the MS, many of these planets will be engulfed and destroye…

astro-ph.SR2026

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…

astro-ph.SR2026

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…

astro-ph.EP2026

Observable Metal Pollution in Main-Sequence Stars: Simulations of Rocky Planets Engulfed by Stars in the to M Range

Kaitlyn T. Lane, Alexander P. Stephan, Melinda Soares-Furtado +2

The engulfment of planets by their host stars is an expected outcome of various dynamical processes and has been invoked to explain a variety of observed stellar properties, such a…

astro-ph.SR2025

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…

astro-ph.HE2025

Evolution of the ZTF SLRN-2020 star-planet merger

Ricardo Yarza, Morgan MacLeod, Benjamin Idini +2

We model the optical and infrared transient ZTF SLRN-2020, previously associated with a star-planet merger. We consider the scenario in which orbital decay via tidal dissipation le…