Seminario DAS: Massive binaries: Wind-mediated mass transfer

Speaker: Dr. Ileyk El Mellah
Affiliation: Assistant Professor, USACH

Abstract: Massive binary stars play a pivotal role in understanding stellar evolution, particularly in the context of mergers between compact objects. They shed light on the role of mass loss and mass transfer through stellar winds, which are of uttermost importance to determine the subsequent orbital evolution. In the late evolutionary stages, when one of the two stars already collapsed into a neutron star or a black hole, the accretion of a fraction of the stellar wind produces variable high-energy emission, particle acceleration, non-thermal radiation and jet launching.
In this talk, I will highlight the role played by multi-physics simulations in bridging the gap between scales, from the launching of the radiation driven wind all the way to the immediate vicinity of the compact object. We will see how clumps form in the wind before being serendipitously captured by the orbiting accretor, triggering flares in high-mass X-ray binaries. In the dilute, hot and highly magnetized plasma surrounding the accreting black hole, 3D global particle-in-cell simulations in curved spacetime describe how particle are accelerated through magnetic reconnection. I will finish with a discussion on the detectability of a new family of X-ray whispering black holes looming around OB stars.