Common Envelope Evolution Of Toy Stars Using Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics

Abstract

Space is both fascinating and mysterious, and there are a staggering number of problems which exist and are being studied. The topic of this paper is on one such problem known as common envelope evolution. This evolution process occurs when two stars in a binary star system are surrounded by a gas cloud. The gas cloud affects the stars in the system in various ways, and the process may be used to explain some observations made on actual binary systems. This process has been studied using various techniques, and one such technique used to study it is the smooth particle hydrodynamic modeling technique. This is a modeling technique which began in the astronomical field but has since expanded into various fields and modeling problems. More information on both this modeling technique as well the astronomical process can be found in the following sections.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the methods and results of a year-long research project which blended computer science, mathematics, and physics by using smooth particle hydrodynamics to simulate toy stars in the common envelope pro- cess. These results include simulating multiple stars, improving the runtime of the simulation, and working to better define portions of the simulation. In addition to describing the results of this study, I will also work to explain the topics and math- ematics presented in the paper because the topics are not simple and required a fair amount of study before the work on the project’s simulation could even begin.