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Session 43 - Binary Stars.
Display session, Tuesday, January 16
North Banquet Hall, Convention Center
Two-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations of mass transfer in short period Algol type binaries were performed using the numerical code VH-1. This code uses the Piecewise Parabolic Method with a Lagrangian Remap. The purpose of the simulations was to study the H\alpha emission from circumstellar gas in the Algols. Using observational evidence from the literature to constrain the gas stream properties, maps of the H\alpha emissivity in the two systems \beta Per (P = 2.87^d) and TT Hya (P = 6.95^d) were made in both Cartesian and velocity coordinates. The velocity maps were then compared to Doppler tomograms constructed from observed H\alpha line emission in these systems. Since the tomograms cannot be directly transformed to spatial maps, the simulated Cartesian maps enabled us to interpret the dynamical processes which produce the features observed in the Doppler tomograms. We find that the simulations produce asymmetric accretion structures with many features similar to those found in Doppler tomograms of such systems.
