The effects of binary stars on inferred remnant populations in globular clusters

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dc.contributor.advisor Hénault-Brunet, Vincent
dc.creator Smith, Peter J.
dc.date.accessioned 2022-06-06T16:34:25Z
dc.date.available 2022-06-06T16:34:25Z
dc.date.issued 2022-05-11
dc.identifier.uri http://library2.smu.ca/xmlui/handle/01/30954
dc.description 1 online resource (xiii, 70 pages) : illustrations, charts (some colour), graphs (some colour)
dc.description Includes abstract and appendix.
dc.description Includes bibliographical references (pages 68-70).
dc.description.abstract Current, state-of-the-art equilibrium mass models of globular clusters assume that all stars are single, making the effects of binary systems an unknown quantity. In this thesis we develop a method to include realistic binary populations in these models. We use our method to fit three sets of models with varying binary fractions to observations of the globular cluster 47 Tuc. All three sets of models are able to reproduce all observables and differ almost exclusively in their recovered mass function slopes and black hole content while retaining consistent estimates for structural parameters. Models with binary fractions of 0%, 2% and 10% have inferred black hole populations with masses of 135<sup>+104</sup><sub>&minus;92</sub> M⊙, 114<sup>+144</sup><sub>&minus;79</sub> M⊙ and 81<sup>+121</sup> <sub>&minus;81</sub> M⊙ respectively,showing that the inferred black hole content decreases when increasing the assumed binary fraction. We show that this effect is due to binary stars filling a similar role to black holes in the central mass distribution of the cluster indicating that there exists a degeneracy between the adopted binary fraction and the inferred black hole content for some clusters. We further discuss the implications of these results for past and future works. en_CA
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dc.language.iso en en_CA
dc.publisher Halifax, N.S. : Saint Mary's University
dc.title The effects of binary stars on inferred remnant populations in globular clusters en_CA
dc.type Text en_CA
thesis.degree.name Bachelor of Science (Honours Astrophysics)
thesis.degree.level Undergraduate
thesis.degree.discipline Astronomy and Physics
thesis.degree.grantor Saint Mary's University (Halifax, N.S.)
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