Dr. Andrew King, ITP & U-Leicester, Evolution of Black Hole and Related Binaries

Mar 23, 1999 Evolution of Black Hole and Related Binaries Dr. Andrew King, ITP & U-Leicester I review recent developments in the study of black-hole and related binary evolution. Self-irradiation plays a major role both in determining disc stability and in the form of the outbursts that may result. The high incidence of black-hole systems among soft X-ray transients may reflect the fact that the nature of the central radiation source can be fundamentally different in a black hole system because of the lack of a hard stellar surface. It is not likely that black holes in binaries can be made to spin rapidly because of accretion of angular momentum. However, efficient extraction of spin energy would reduce the angular momentum parameter from a ~ M to small values on a plausible timescale. This effect constitutes a loss of gravitating mass from the black hole and can afect the evolution of the binary, possibly reducing the mass transfer rate to the point where the system becomes transient. Recent work on radiatively driven outflows from accretion discs suggests that black-hole and neutron-star binaries may avoid common-envelope evolution even for the very high rates of mass transfer given by thermal-timescale Roche lobe overflow.

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