The DOI matches its Crossref record; 28 of the 28 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Stellar mergers as the origin of magnetic massive stars
Open accessAbstract
About ten per cent of ‘massive’ stars (those of more than 1.5 solar masses) have strong, large-scale surface magnetic fields1–3. It has been suggested that merging of main-sequence and pre-main-sequence stars could produce such strong fields4,5, and the predicted fraction of merged massive stars is also about ten per cent6,7. The merger hypothesis is further supported by a lack of magnetic stars in close binaries8,9, which is as expected if mergers produce magnetic stars. Here we report three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamical simulations of the coalescence of two massive stars and follow the evolution of the merged product. Strong magnetic fields are produced in the simulations, and the merged star rejuvenates such that it appears younger and bluer than other coeval stars. This can explain the properties of the magnetic ‘blue straggler’ star τ Sco in the Upper Scorpius association that has an observationally inferred, apparent age of less than five million years, which is less than half the age of its birth association10. Such massive blue straggler stars seem likely to be progenitors of magnetars, perhaps giving rise to some of the enigmatic fast radio bursts observed11, and their supernovae may be affected by their strong magnetic fields12. Simulated mergers of two massive stars provide a solution to the long-standing puzzle of the origin of strong magnetic fields in a subset of massive stars.
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Cites
The Chemical Composition of the Sun
Asplund, M., Grevesse, N., Sauval, A. J., & Scott, P. (2009) · Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics · doi:10.1146/annurev.astro.46.060407.145222 · Cited by 9,346
Gorski, K. M., Hivon, E., Banday, A. J., Wandelt, B. D., Hansen, F. K., Reinecke, M., & Bartelmann, M. (2005) · The Astrophysical Journal · doi:10.1086/427976 · Cited by 5,958
Balbus, S. A., & Hawley, J. F. (1991) · The Astrophysical Journal · doi:10.1086/170270 · Cited by 4,469
Self-citationMODULES FOR EXPERIMENTS IN STELLAR ASTROPHYSICS (MESA)
Paxton, B., Bildsten, L., Dotter, A., Herwig, F., Lesaffre, P., & Timmes, F. (2011) · The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series · doi:10.1088/0067-0049/192/1/3 · Cited by 4,360
Paxton, B., Cantiello, M., Arras, P., Bildsten, L., Brown, E. F., Dotter, A., Mankovich, C., Montgomery, M. H., Stello, D., Timmes, F. X., et al. (2013) · The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series · doi:10.1088/0067-0049/208/1/4 · Cited by 3,549
MODULES FOR EXPERIMENTS IN STELLAR ASTROPHYSICS (MESA): BINARIES, PULSATIONS, AND EXPLOSIONS
Paxton, B., Marchant, P., Schwab, J., Bauer, E. B., Bildsten, L., Cantiello, M., Dessart, L., Farmer, R., Hu, H., Langer, N., et al. (2015) · The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series · doi:10.1088/0067-0049/220/1/15 · Cited by 3,204
E pur si muove:Galilean-invariant cosmological hydrodynamical simulations on a moving mesh
Springel, V. (2010) · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2009.15715.x · Cited by 2,424
Self-citationPaxton, B., Schwab, J., Bauer, E. B., Bildsten, L., Blinnikov, S., Duffell, P., Farmer, R., Goldberg, J. A., Marchant, P., Sorokina, E., et al. (2018) · The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series · doi:10.3847/1538-4365/aaa5a8 · Cited by 2,121
A Solution-Adaptive Upwind Scheme for Ideal Magnetohydrodynamics
Powell, K. G., Roe, P. L., Linde, T. J., Gombosi, T. I., & De Zeeuw, D. L. (1999) · Journal of Computational Physics · doi:10.1006/jcph.1999.6299 · Cited by 1,505
Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA)
Paxton, B. (2026) · doi:10.5281/zenodo.19685576 · Cited by 1,411
Metadata
- Authors
- Schneider, F. R. N., Ohlmann, S. T., Podsiadlowski, P., Röpke, F. K., Balbus, S. A., Pakmor, R., & Springel, V.
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2019-10-09
- Volume
- 574
- Issue
- 7777
- Pages
- 211-214
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W2979968385
- Cited by
- 268
- References
- 28
- FWCI
- 14.77
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
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