Chemically homogeneous evolution in massive binaries

TL;DR

This paper explores how rapid rotation and binary interactions can lead to chemically homogeneous evolution in massive stars, affecting their end states and providing alternative pathways for forming compact binaries.

Contribution

It demonstrates that nearly chemically homogeneous evolution can occur in close tidally-locked binaries, challenging classical models and offering new formation channels for Wolf-Rayet and black hole binaries.

Findings

Chemically homogeneous evolution occurs in close binaries due to tidal locking.

Such stars can remain compact and avoid mass transfer or mergers.

This evolution pathway may lead to the formation of tight Wolf-Rayet and black hole binaries.

Abstract

Rotation can have severe consequences for the evolution of massive stars. It is now considered as one of the main parameters, alongside mass and metallicity that determine the final fate of single stars. In massive, fast rotating stars mixing processes induced by rotation may be so efficient that helium produced in the center is mixed throughout the envelope. Such stars evolve almost chemically homogeneously. At low metallicity they remain blue and compact, while they gradually evolve into Wolf-Rayet stars and possibly into progenitors of long gamma-ray bursts. In binaries this type of evolution may occur because of (I) tides in very close binaries, as a result of (II) spin up by mass transfer, as result of (III) a merger of the two stars and (IV) when one of the components in the binary was born with a very high initial rotation rate. As these stars stay compact, the evolutionary channels are very different from what classical binary evolutionary models predict. In this contribution we discuss examples of nearly chemically homogeneous evolution in very close tidally-locked binaries. Even in such very close massive binaries, the stars may remain compact and avoid mass transfer, while Roche lobe overflow and a merger would be inevitable in the classical picture. This type of evolution may provide an alternative path to form tight Wolf-Rayet binaries and massive black hole binaries.