Modelling stellar evolution in mass-transferring binaries and gravitational-wave progenitors with METISSE

Understand

Massive binaries are vital sources of various transient processes, including gravitational-wave mergers.

• However, large uncertainties in the evolution of massive stars, both physical and numerical, present a major challenge to the understanding of their binary evolution.
• In this paper, we upgrade our interpolation-based stellar evolution code METISSE to include the effects of mass changes, such as binary mass transfer or wind-driven mass loss, not already included within the input stellar tracks.
• METISSE's implementation of mass loss (applied to tracks without mass loss) shows excellent agreement with the SSE fitting formulae and with detailed MESA tracks, except in cases where the mass transfer is too rapid for the star to maintain equilibrium.