Tapir Seminar
Thursday, October 22, 1:30pm, 312 Cahill

Eliot Quataert, UC Berkeley

"Nonlinear Tides in Close Binary Systems"

The excitation and dissipation of tides strongly influences the
evolution of most close binary systems, from planetary systems to
compact object binaries. Despite the fact that the theoretical
framework for understanding tides in binary systems is well over a
century old, many of the observed orbital properties of close binaries
are still not well understood. In this talk I will describe ongoing
work that attempts to go beyond the standard linear theory treatment
of tides in stars, focusing on solar-type stars with either stellar or
planetary (hot Jupiter) companions. I will describe how nonlinear
interactions dramatically modify both the excitation and damping of
resonantly excited internal gravity waves in stars: the linear
approximation used in previous investigations does not hold. I will
conclude by discussing the implications of these effects for the
orbital properties of solar-type binaries and for the orbital decay of
Jupiter-mass planets around sun-like stars.