Evolutionary Processes in Binary and Multiple Stars

by Peter Eggleton

Overview

Binary systems of stars are as common as single stars. Stars evolve primarily by nuclear reactions in their interiors, but a star with a binary companion can also have its evolution influenced by the companion. Multiple star systems can exist in a stable state for millions of years, but can ultimately become unstable as one star grows in radius until it engulfs another. This volume discusses the statistics of binary stars; the evolution of single stars; and several of the most important kinds of interaction between two (and even three or more) stars. A series of mathematical appendices provides a concise but complete account of the mathematics of these processes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521855570
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/20/2006
Series:	Cambridge Astrophysics , #40
Pages:	332
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.61(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Peter Eggleton is a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. Evolution of single stars; 3. Binary interaction: conservative processes; 4. Slow non-conservative processes; 5. Rapid non-conservative processes; 6. Accretion by the companion; Appendices.

Editorial Reviews

Review of the hardback: '… I know of no book quite like Peter Eggleton's monograph, which describes in great detail stellar evolution in the context of binary and to some extent multiple stars, but also gives a masterly and comprehensive one-chapter summary of single-star evolution, in a very concise style. Anyone who masters the contents will have a deep understanding of the processes involved and of the approximations that are necessary to make progress. … the writing is clear and readable … the text is full of nice phrases that are accessible to everyone … A nice feature of the book, that will make it more accessible to non-experts, is that the detailed mathematical justifications have mostly been placed in the appendices that take up the last 50 pages of the book … a remarkable book … it is authoritative and comprehensive and will be a fruitful source of ideas for those working in the field. It should also persuade our extragalactic colleagues that stellar evolution is still a topic with lots of interesting unsolved problems.' The Observatory

From the Publisher