Evolution of Low-mass Symbiotic Binaries by Zhuo Chen Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Supervised by Professor Adam Frank and Professor Eric G. Blackman Department of Physics and Astronomy Arts, Sciences and Engineering School of Arts and Sciences University of Rochester Rochester, New York 2018 ii Dedicated to Yiyun Peng. iii Table of Contents Biographical Sketch vi Acknowledgments vii Abstract viii Contributors and Funding Sources ix List of Tables x List of Figures xi List of Acronyms and Abbreviations xiii 1 Introduction of low-mass symbiotic binary systems 1 1.1 Isolated RGB and AGB stars . .1 1.2 Morphology of the outflow in binary systems . .3 1.3 Orbital evolution and possible outcomes . .4 2 Methods 7 2.1 Operator split . .7 2.2 Discretization . 10 2.3 Finite volume scheme . 11 iv 2.4 Riemann problem . 12 2.5 Adaptive mesh refinement . 15 3 The Creation of AGB Fallback Shells 17 3.1 Introduction . 17 3.2 Method and Model . 19 3.3 Results . 23 3.4 Summary and Discussion . 29 4 Three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of L2 Puppis 31 4.1 Introduction . 31 4.2 Hydrodynamic model description . 33 4.3 Disk and outflow formation . 35 4.4 RADMC-3D model . 38 4.5 Radiation transfer simulation results . 41 4.6 Summary and discussion . 44 5 Mass Transfer and Disc Formation in AGB Binary Systems 46 5.1 Introduction . 46 5.2 model description . 50 5.3 binary simulations . 62 5.4 conclusions and discussion . 75 Appendix 5.A the ’Hollow’ in model 6 . 78 6 Wind-accelerated orbital evolution in binary systems with giant stars 80 6.1 Introduction . 80 6.2 Numerical Model . 83 6.3 Analytic Model . 84 v 6.4 Results Using Simulations to Fix Model Parameters . 85 6.5 Astrophysical implications . 95 6.6 Conclusions . 98 Appendix 6.A Justifying Spin-Orbit Synchronized AGB star . 99 Appendix 6.B angular momentum error in AGB wind . 100 Appendix 6.C time varying γ ............................. 101 7 Conclusions and Discussion 105 7.1 Conclusions . 105 7.2 Discussions . 107 Bibliography 111 vi Biographical Sketch Zhuo Chen was born in 1989 and raised in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei Province in China. He attended Tongji University in Shanghai from 2007-2012. He majored in engineering mechanics but also took one year of study in the German language. He came to the University of Rochester as a graduate student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 2012. Professor Chuang Ren, Wenda Liu, and Rui Yan encouraged him to also look for opportunities in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. In 2013, he joined Adam Frank’s astrophysics group and become a graduate student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He was fascinated by the binary star problem and computational physics and enjoyed doing research at the University of Rochester. The following publications were a result of work conducted during the doctoral study: Chen, Z., Frank, A., Blackman, E. G. , & Nordhaus, J. 2016, MNRAS, 457, 3219 Chen, Z., Nordhaus, J., Frank, A., & Blackman, E. G. 2016, MNRAS, 410, 4180 Chen, Z., Frank, A., Blackman, E. G., Nordhaus J., & Carroll-Nellenback, J. 2017, MNRAS, 468, 4465 Chen, Z., Blackman E. G., Frank A., Nordhaus, J., & Carroll-Nellenback J. 2018, MNRAS, 473, 747 vii Acknowledgments I want to thank Adam Frank first. It would not have been possible for me to pursue my dream of astrophysics without your offering. You are a very considerate and kind advisor who cares about the students. Your passion for astronomy encouraged me to think deeper and work harder. I had a very unforgettable life as a graduate student in your group. I also thank Eric G. Blackman. Your advice and suggestions were most valuable to me. Thank you for listening to my ideas and discussing with me and thank you for taking a lot of time to read and revise my writings. Jason Nordhaus, Jonathan Carroll-Nellenback, and Baowei Liu have provided great help in my research. I could not have done all the research in this thesis without their help. I have also learned a lot from all of you. I must also thank Laura Blumkin. You are the best coordinator that I have known. You helped all the way since the day I came to the Department of Physics and Astronomy. At last, I want to thank my wife, Yiyun Peng. Thank you for your support and encouragement! viii Abstract Binary stars consist of more than 50 percent of the population of all-stars. Low-mass binary systems may be the progenitors of many interesting objects, such as type Ia supernovae, luminous red novae, planetary nebulae, and etc. For distant binary stars, they will evolve like two single stars, for close binary stars, they may come into interaction if one or both of the stars grow in size as they enter the giant branch. The giant stars can eject dense stellar wind that is slow in speed. Some of the ejected materials can be captured by the companion under the influence of the gravity and the other ejected materials leave the binary system also influenced - the morphology of the ejecta is always asymmetric. Observations reveal that circumbinary disks, spiral structure, and bipolar shaped outflows can be found in the different evolved binary systems. On the other hand, the binary stars may get closer with the on-going mass transfer process and trigger more violent orbital evolution and finally lead to the merging of the binaries. We aim to study the mass ejection, mass transfer, morphology, and orbital evolution of the low-mass binary systems. We mainly use AstroBEAR to carry out the 3-D numerical calculation. ix Contributors and Funding Sources This work was supervised by a dissertation committee consisting of Professors Adam Frank (co- advisor), Professor Eric G. Blackman (co-advisor), and Professor Segev Benzvi of the Depart- ment of Physics and Astronomy, and Professor Chuang Ren from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Professor Douglas H. Kelley from the Department of Mechanical Engineering served as the chair during the Ph.D. defense. The thesis research was financially supported by Space Telescope Science Institute grants HST-AR-11251.01-A, HST-AR-12128.01-A, and HST-AR-12146.04-A, National Science Foundation awards AST-1515648, AST-0807363 and AST-1102738 and the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at the University of Rochester by the Hor- ton Fellowship. Computational resources were provided by the Center for Integrated Research Computing at the University of Rochester. x List of Tables 5.1 Planck mean opacity of olivine and pyroxene at different temperature of black- body radiation. 54 5.2 AGB star’s physical properties. 57 5.3 Numerical setup of the binary models. 63 5.4 Average mass loss rate of the AGB star and the mass accretion rate of the secondary. 64 6.1 Measured parameters from 3D simulations. 87 6.2 Conservative mass transfer model. 88 6.3 BHL mass transfer model. 89 6.4 All angular momentum in AGB wind (γall) and angular momentum with a spinning boundary (γspin). ............................ 90 6.5 Binary separation change rate and orbital period change rate of four different scenarios. 92 6.6 Synchronization timescale of the giant star. 100 xi List of Figures 1.1 π Gruis, an AGB star that is 530 light-years away. Credit: ESO/VLT . .2 1.2 A spiral nebula surrounding star R Sculptoris. .4 1.3 V and NR bands of L2 Puppis . .5 2.1 Illustration of finite volume scheme. 12 2.2 The solution structure of the exact Riemann solver of a shock tube problem. 13 2.3 The solution structure of a classic HLLC Riemann solver . 14 2.4 Topological structure of a domain that has adaptive refined area. 16 3.1 Time dependent boundary condition of the star. 21 3.2 Time evolution of shell with initial shell velocity vlow = 14:27 km/s....... 23 3.3 Time evolution of shell with initial shell velocity vhigh = 14:68 km/s...... 25 3.4 Results of trajectories of the shell from AstroBEAR and analytic model. 28 4.1 Density plots of face-on and edge-on view of the circumbinary disk. 36 4.2 3D contour plot of density. 37 4.3 The wavelength dependent absorption and scattering opacity of the dust mixture. 40 4.4 Spectral energy distribution of L2 Puppis . 42 4.5 Synthetic V-band and N-band images from our hydrodynamic simulation com- pared to the corresponding ZIMPOL observations for the same logarithmic scale. 43 4.6 The top-down synthetic image of 600nm and 11µm............... 44 xii 5.1 The AGB star’s structure in our model. 56 5.2 Results of the phenomenological model of isolated AGB star. 58 5.3 Mass loss rate and the boundary velocity of the AGB star during the burst event as a function of time. 60 5.4 Density plot of x = 0 and z = 0 plane cuts of the five ’no burst’ models. 67 5.4 Continued figures. 68 5.5 Plots of density projection of z and x axes in g cm−3of the ’burst’ model. 72 5.5 Continued figures . 73 5.6 The accretion rate vs time. 74 5.7 Density plots of x = 0 and z = 0 plane cuts at different time in model 6. 79 Û Û Û Û 6.1 Plots of Psyn,exall, Pnon,exall, Psyn,exspin, and Pnon,exspin ............... 94 6.2 Conceptual fate of the secondary considering wind and tide. 96 6.3 Conceptual ρ¹a; tiº and ρ¹a; tf º..........................