MASS TRANSFER IN BINARY STARS USING SMOOTHED PARTICLE HYDRODYNAMICS. II. ECCENTRIC BINARIES

Despite numerous efforts to better understand binary star evolution, some aspects of it remain poorly constrained. In particular, the evolution of eccentric binaries has remained elusive mainly because the Roche lobe formalism derived for circular binaries does not apply. Here we report the results of our smoothed particle hydrodynamic simulations of mass transfer in eccentric binaries using an alternate method in which we model only the …