Common Envelope Evolution of Massive Stars

Understand

The discovery via gravitational waves of binary black hole systems with total masses greater than $60M_\odot$ has raised interesting questions for stellar evolution theory.

• Among the most promising formation channels for these systems is one involving a common envelope binary containing a low metallicity, core helium burning star with mass $\sim 80-90M_\odot$ and a black hole with mass $\sim 30-40M_\odot$.
• For this channel to be viable, the common envelope binary must eject more than half the giant star's mass and reduce its orbital separation by as much as a factor of 80.
• We discuss issues faced in numerically simulating the common envelope evolution of such systems and present a 3D AMR simulation of the dynamical inspiral of a low-metallicity red supergiant with a massive black hole companion.