Mb. Davies, THE BINARY ZOO - THE CALCULATION OF PRODUCTION-RATES OF BINARIES THROUGH 2-ENCOUNTERS IN GLOBULAR-CLUSTERS(1), Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 276(3), 1995, pp. 887-905
In studying encounters between binaries and single stars, one is inter
ested in three classes of events: exchanges of stars, hardening of the
original binary by a third star, and the production of merged objects
. We present a means for computing cross-sections for these three outc
omes for an arbitrary binary and single star, as might be found in the
core of a globular cluster. The cross-sections for a number of binari
es in various stellar populations are then computed. We consider multi
ple encounters and the ultimate fate of a population of binaries fed i
nto the cores of different globular cluster models. We see that the pr
esence of only a relatively small number of binaries (containing 10 pe
r cent of the stars) will boost the production rate of astrophysically
interesting objects by a factor of at least a few over the rates expe
cted from encounters between single stars. In particular, the ratio of
smothered neutron stars to low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) may be gre
atly increased, possibly explaining, in part, the excess of millisecon
d pulsars compared to LMXBs.