Thesis Topic: The binary central stars of planetary nebulae
Thesis Supervisor: Henri Boffin
Abstract
Binarity and mass transfer has long been thought to be important in the formation and evolution of planetary nebulae - particularly in those presenting axisymmetric structures. Many recent discoveries by our group confirm this hypothesis and allow us to reconstruct the mass transfer history of these systems. Such discoveries are made with photometric and spectroscopic techniques.
We hereby propose to further analyse several systems for which we have extensive datasets, and pursue our study of binary central stars of planetary nebulae, with an emphasis on :
- the link with morphology and the formation of jet-like structures
- the post-common envelope evolution
- the carbon and s-process enhanced central stars.