Speaker
Description
Stars shed a large fraction of their mass during their lifetimes through dense stellar winds and supernova explosions. Because the gravitational potential that changes as this mass is lost, the orbits of planets, moons, and stellar companions can widen, become eccentric, or unbind entirely. Here, I present a series of studies that examine these consequences using variable-mass N-body simulations with a homologous envelope expansion model, complemented by analytical and orbit-averaged secular methods.
In my talk, I will discuss several interesting phenomena associated with stellar mass loss, drawing on half a decade of research. How stable are planetary orbits around a star that explodes as a core-collapse supernova? If the orbit unbinds, and a rogue planet forms, can it retain its moons, and on what orbits? Can those moons sustain liquid subsurface oceans similar to those on Europa or Enceladus? In massive binary systems, can subsequent supernova explosions explain the observed population of double neutron stars? Is it possible to form a compact binary with a mass-gap black hole during a supernova-explosion? Finally, can tidally enhanced mass loss account for the exceptionally high eccentricity of Wolf-Rayet binaries?