Splinter Meeting Stellar

Stellar Interactions

Time: Thursday September 24, 14:00-18:00 and Friday September 25, 09:00-13:00 and 14:00-18:00 CEST (UTC+2)

Room: virtual room M

Convenor(s): S. Geier [1], E. Günther [2], K. Poppenhäger [3], N. Reindl [1], V. Schaffenroth [1], H. Todt [1]
[1] U Potsdam, [2] TLS Tautenburg, [3] AIP

Stars are not formed in isolation. Their nurseries are large clouds of gas where they are born together interacting with each other and the material around them. Also in the later stages of their evolution various stellar interactions are common and important for many fields of astrophysics.
More than half of all stars have one of more companions and a significant fraction of those will at some point interact with each other. Those interactions can be rather gentle effects like irradiation or tidal deformation. But they can also be quite dramatic. Stars can transfer significant amounts of mass, swallow each other and form a common envelope or even merge altogether forming a single object. In the most extreme cases the mergers of stellar remnants can be detected as gravitational wave sources or gamma ray bursts. Close encounters of stars with supermassive black holes can eject stars out of their host galaxies or lead to tidal disruptions of the stars observed as transients.
Stars are not only interacting with each other, but also with their environment. Massive stars and stars in the late phases of their evolution lose significant amounts of mass via stellar winds and enrich the interstellar medium with nuclear processed material. Stellar explosions create shock waves and deposit large amounts of energy sometimes triggering the formation of new stars.
Stars also interact with the planetary systems around them in various ways. Tidal or magnetic interaction with Hot Jupiters can be expected through analogies to stellar binaries. Furthermore, stars can influence the gaseous atmospheres of their planets significantly. Especially in young systems the intense high-energy flux of the star may heat and evaporate the planetary atmosphere in part or even completely.
In this splinter session we aim at gathering an interdisciplinary group of experts to discuss most recent developments in the broad field of stellar interactions, share ideas and maybe form new collaborations.

Program

Thursday September 24, 14:00-18:00 Stellar Interactions - Session I (virtual room M)

Friday September 25, 09:00-13:00 Stellar Interactions - Session II (virtual room M)

Friday September 25, 14:00-18:00 Stellar Interactions - Session III (virtual room M)

Related contributions