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L. Prato (UCLA)
This work describes an investigation of the astrophysics and accretion disk evolution in the spatially resolved components of close, pre-main-sequence binary stars. Combining near-IR spectroscopy and photometry, I have determined the spectral types, luminosities, masses, ages, Avs and near-IR excesses for 29 stars in 17 binary systems (1.2-7.6''), and the mass ratios for 12 such systems. Typical masses range from 0.1-0.4M\hbox{\odot}, and mass ratios, M1/M2, from ~1-3. In an overlapping sample of 25 systems, I observed evidence for circumstellar disks around both stars in 15 systems and around neither star in 5 systems. The stars in the remaining 5 systems show evidence for disks in only one component. This is usually the primary star, however, in one case it is the secondary. These results are consistent with the current models for binary star formation by fragmentation.