THE INCIDENCE OF STELLAR MERGERS AND MASS GAINERS AMONG MASSIVE STARS

Authors: S. E. de Mink, H. Sana, N. Langer, R. G. Izzard, F. R. N. Schneider - The Astrophysical Journal 2014 cited by 360

Because the majority of massive stars are born as members of close binary systems, populations of massive mainsequence stars contain stellar mergers and products of binary mass transfer. We simulate populations of massive stars accounting for all major binary evolution effects based on the most recent binary parameter statistics and extensively evaluate the effect of model uncertainties. Assuming constant star formation, we find that 8 +9