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A Cyclic Thermal Instability in Contact Binary Stars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2015

Brian P. Flannery*
Affiliation:
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J. 08540, U.S.A.

Abstract

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Contact binary stars coupled by a common convective envelope in which the entropy is constant, the Lucy model, are unstable against mass exchange: if either component begins to transfer mass, it will continue to do so. A detailed sequence of models is calculated which follows the thermal evolution of a 2M contact binary of normal Population I abundances (X=0.70, Z = 0.02), starting at nearly equal mass. The initial instability develops into a cyclic mass-exchange with the mass fraction oscillating between 0.56≤m2/(m1 + m2)≤0.62 with a period of ~107yr. Throughout the cycle the component stars are not in thermal equilibrium. The instability is of a general nature, and such oscillating systems can satisfactorily populate the short period, red region of the period color relation for WUMa stars.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Reidel 1976