Binary systems account for about half of all stars in the sky, with as many as 70 percent of all massive stars among them. As the two components of a binary orbit each other under the effect of gravity, they tend to interact in many ways that influence their evolution, which is consequently very different from that of single stars.

Binary evolution has been proven to be the key to understanding many of the previously unexplained mysteries pertaining to stars in the universe. It is responsible for a number of important celestial objects such as type Ia supernovae and stellar-mass black hole binaries, which are closely related to cosmology and gravitational wave astronomy.

The scope of our research covers many of the physical processes that are found within these binary systems, such as tidal effects and mass transfer, which are among the most common interactions that occur within binaries. Particular emphasis is placed on the study of the dynamical stability of binary mass transfer, as well as the common envelope process that ensues if and when the mass transfer process becomes unstable, both of which are bottlenecks in our understanding of binary evolution in general. We study these processes by establishing physical models and running simulations, which can also be used to investigate other binary phenomena, including but not limited to non-conservative mass transfer, angular momentum loss, and wind accretion.

To name a few of our major contributions to this field, our group has been responsible for establishing the adiabatic and thermal equilibrium mass loss models, breaking degeneracies between the effects induced by variations of the physical structure, orbital parameters, and mass transfer conditions on the evolution of the binary, thereby simplifying our models on the subject in general.