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First Advisor

Louis Rubbo

Abstract

Our Sun is one of roughly 100 billion other stars that make up the Milky Way Galaxy. Two-thirds of all stars are paired off, with a gravitational bond between the two stars. Such systems are known as stellar binaries. Although these binaries are very common in the galaxy, there is much yet to be learned about their formation, evolution, and interactions. The approach taken in this thesis is to produce simulated data representing the expected measurements that an observational astronomer would collect. We attempt to simulate three different stellar binary star systems: an eclipsing binary, a spectroscopic binary, and a gravitational wave emitting binary. In the case of the eclipsing binary, we aim to create a graph of the amount of light received as a function of time. For the spectroscopic binary, we use the fundamental physical principles to measure the velocity of each of the stars with respect to the Earth. Then for the gravitational wave emitting binary, we generate a plot which measures the distortion of spacetime due to the rotation of the stellar binary. Using these generalized functions, a future researcher will be able to develop a statistical analysis program that combines all of the data from the models in an effort to learn more about the characteristics of the stellar binary.

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