Stellar Encounters with Massive Star‐Disk Systems

The dense, clustered environment in which massive stars form can lead tointeractions with neighboring stars. It has been hypothesized that collisionsand mergers may contribute to the growth of the most massive stars. In thispaper we extend the study of star-disk interactions to explore encountersbetween a massive protostar and a less massive cluster sibling using thepublicly available SPH code GADGET-2. Collisions do not occur in the parameterspace studied, but the end state of many encounters is an eccentric binary witha semi-major axis ~ 100 AU. Disk material is sometimes captured by theimpactor. Most encounters result in disruption and destruction of the initialdisk, and periodic torquing of the remnant disk. We consider the effect of thechanging orientation of the disk on an accretion driven jet, and the evolutionof the systems in the presence of on-going accretion from the parent core.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, accepted to Ap