Binary Stellar Mergers with Marginally-Bound Ejecta: Excretion Disks, Inflated Envelopes, Outflows, and their Luminous Transients

TL;DR

This study uses radiative hydrodynamical simulations to explore mass loss mechanisms in binary stellar mergers, revealing how different conditions lead to outflows, disks, or envelopes, and their resulting luminous transients.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of mass loss processes in binary mergers, highlighting the role of bound and unbound outflows, and the conditions leading to different transient phenomena.

Findings

Bound gas can form excretion disks or inflated envelopes.

Luminosity reaches 1-10% of Mdot v_orb^2/2 in all cases.

Outflow behavior depends on the ratio of cooling to advection times.

Abstract

We study mass loss from the outer Lagrange point (L2) in binary stellar mergers and their luminous transients by means of radiative hydrodynamical simulations. Previously, we showed that for binary mass ratios 0.06 < q < 0.8, synchronous L2 mass loss results in a radiatively inefficient, dust-forming unbound equatorial outflow. A similar outflow exists irrespective of q if the ratio of the sound speed to the orbital speed at the injection point is sufficiently large, \epsilon = c_T/v_orb > 0.15. By contrast, for cold L2 mass-loss (\epsilon < 0.15) from binaries with q < 0.06 or q > 0.8, the equatorial outflow instead remains marginally-bound and falls back to the binary over tens to hundreds of binary orbits, where it experiences additional tidal torqueing and shocking. As the bound gas becomes virialized with the binary, the luminosity of the system increases slowly at approximately constant photosphere radius, causing the temperature to rise. Subsequent evolution depends on the efficiency of radiative cooling. If the bound atmosphere is able to cool efficiently, as quantified by radiative diffusion time being shorter than the advection time (t_diff/t_adv < 1), then the virialized gas collapses to an excretion disk, while for t_diff/t_adv > 1 an isotropic wind is formed. Between these two extremes, an inflated envelope transports the heat generated near the binary to the surface by meridional flows. In all cases, the radiated luminosity reaches a fraction ~0.01 to 0.1 of Mdot v_orb^2/2, where Mdot is the mass outflow rate. We discuss the implications of our results for transients in the luminosity gap between classical novae and supernovae, such as V1309 Sco and V838 Mon.