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ABSTRACT During the common-envelope binary interaction, the expanding layers of the gaseous common envelope recombine and the resulting recombination energy has been suggested as a contributing factor to the ejection of the envelope. In this paper, we perform a comparative study between simulations with and without the inclusion of recombination energy. We use two distinct setups, comprising a 0.88- and 1.8-M⊙ giants, that have been studied before and can serve as benchmarks. In so doing, we conclude that (i) the final orbital separation is not affected by the choice of equation of state (EoS). In other words, simulations that unbind but a small fraction of the envelope result in similar final separations to those that, thanks to recombination energy, unbind a far larger fraction. (ii) The adoption of a tabulated EoS results in a much greater fraction of unbound envelope and we demonstrate the cause of this to be the release of recombination energy. (iii) The fraction of hydrogen recombination energy that is allowed to do work should be about half of that which our adiabatic simulations use. (iv) However, for the heavier star simulation, we conclude that it is helium and not hydrogen recombination energy that unbinds the gas and we determine that all helium recombination energy is thermalized in the envelope and does work. (v) The outer regions of the expanding common envelope are likely to see the formation of dust. This dust would promote additional unbinding and shaping of the ejected envelope into axisymmetric morphologies. 

ABSTRACT The morphology of bipolar planetary nebulae (PNe) can be attributed to interactions between a fast wind from the central engine and the dense toroidal-shaped ejecta left over from common envelope (CE) evolution. Here we use the 3D hydrodynamic adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) code AstroBEAR to study the possibility that bipolar PN outflows can emerge collimated even from an uncollimated spherical wind in the aftermath of a CE event. The output of a single CE simulation via the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code phantom serves as the initial conditions. Four cases of winds, all with high enough momenta to account for observed high momenta pre-PN outflows, are injected spherically from the region of the CE binary remnant into the ejecta. We compare cases with two different momenta and cases with no radiative cooling versus application of optically thin emission via a cooling curve to the outflow. Our simulations show that in all cases highly collimated bipolar outflows result from deflection of the spherical wind via the interaction with the CE ejecta. Significant asymmetries between the top and bottom lobes are seen in all cases. The asymmetry is strongest for the lower momentum case with radiative cooling. While real post-CE winds may be aspherical, our models show that collimation via ‘inertial confinement’ will be strong enough to create jet-like outflows even beginning with maximally uncollimated drivers. Our simulations reveal detailed shock structures in the shock-focused inertial confinement (SFIC) model and develop a lens-shaped inner shock that is a new feature of SFIC-driven bipolar lobes.