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Session 77 - Binary Stars.
Display session, Wednesday, January 15
Metropolitan Ballroom,
We present 2D hydrodynamic simulations supporting the hypothesis that the anomalous features of AX Mon reported by Elias et al. may represent the dynamical interaction between a tidal stream from the K giant and a stellar wind from the Be-like giant primary star. Recent observations by Elias et al. show a 1/2 magnitude dip in the near-UV light curves at orbital phase 0.75. These authors modeled this dip with a cloud of absorbing gas near the mass gaining star. The location of this cloud is near the point where one would expect the tidal stream to pass closest to the primary star. This, coupled with evidence for a strong stellar wind consistent with the early spectral type of the primary star, suggests that perhaps this absorbing cloud is the result of the dynamical interaction between the tidal stream and a stellar wind. Our simulations show that this dynamical interaction is highly time-variable as the Rayleigh-Taylor instability breaks apart the stream as the wind pushes it out of the system. However, the time-averaged properties resemble the are in good agreement with the observed dip in the near-UV light curve.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: John_Blondin@NCSU.edu
