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Title: Hydrodynamics and survivability during post-main-sequence planetary engulfment
The engulfment of substellar bodies (SBs) such as brown dwarfs and planets has been invoked as a possible explanation for the presence of SBs orbiting subdwarfs and white dwarfs, rapidly rotating giants, and lithium-rich giants. We perform three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations of the flow in the vicinity of an SB engulfed in a stellar envelope. We model the SB as a rigid body with a reflective boundary because it cannot accrete. This reflective boundary changes the flow morphology to resemble that of engulfed compact objects with outflows. We measure the drag coefficients for the ram pressure and gravitational drag forces acting on the SB, and use them to integrate its trajectory during engulfment. We find that SB engulfment can increase the stellar luminosity of a 1M⊙ star by up to a few orders of magnitude for timescales of up to a few thousand years when the star is ≈10R⊙ and up to a few decades at the tip of the red giant branch. We find that no SBs can eject the envelope of a 1M⊙ star before it evolves to ≈10R⊙ . In contrast, SBs as small as ≈10MJup can eject the envelope at the tip of the red giant branch, shrinking their orbits by several orders of magnitude in the process. The numerical framework we introduce here can be used to study the dynamics of planetary engulfment in a simplified setting that captures the physics of the flow at the scale of the SB.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1911206
NSF-PAR ID:
10367852
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
ArXivorg
ISSN:
2331-8422
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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  2. Abstract

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