Congratulations to Alex Livernois on his paper 'Evolution of binary stars in the early evolutionary phases of ultra-faint dwarf galaxies' accepted for publication on Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
With a set of N-body simulations run on the IU supercomputers Carbonate and Big Red 200, Alex studied the evolution of binary stars during the early evolutionary phases of ultra-faint dwarf galaxies (UFD). Alex's simulations reveal that the evolution of binaries is driven both by tidal effects due to the potential of the UFD dark matter halo and collisional effects associated to binary-binary/single star encounters. His study shows that the UFD early evolutionary phases significantly enhance the disruption of wide binaries and leave their dynamical fingerprints on the semi-major axis distribution of the surviving binaries.
Alex's Ph.D advisor Enrico Vesperini, and Vaclav Pavlik, visiting lecturer in the IU Department of Physics, are co-authors of this paper.
The paper can be found at
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/521/3/4395/7080163
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