Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 66 4 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Treat the stars as point masses for the orbital motion, neglecting their spin angular momenta. Let . Their distances from the centre of mass are and . The sum of their orbital angular momenta isThus the circular-binary orbital angular momentum is
For conservative binary mass transfer, both and are fixed. In terms of the binary mass ratio , and , henceMass conservation also gives , soDifferentiating at fixed gives . Therefore the stipulated Roche lobe law has the Roche-lobe radius response exponent
Define the overfill by . On a time scale short compared with the slow change of , the donor's response is . ThusDuring mass loss . If , mass loss increases the overfill and therefore drives more mass loss: this is positive feedback, giving more rapid Roche-lobe overflow. If , mass loss decreases the overfill and can balance the slow expansion due to stellar evolution. More explicitly, with , contact requiresA slow negative transfer rate can satisfy this only on the stable side . The rapid-transfer condition is thereforeIts time scale depends on the physical donor response represented by ; it need not be a dynamical time scale if is a thermal-equilibrium mass-radius exponent.
For Roche-lobe overflow feedback with a constant wind torque factor, retain mass conservation to the stated approximation but allow the prescribed angular-momentum loss. Since , differentiation givesThe new Roche-lobe radius response exponent isThe same overfill calculation givesA loss of angular momentum has because , and it lowers the critical ratio by making the orbit contract more strongly.
For the specified solar-mass donor exponent , the answer isWithout the wind torque this becomes , so donors slightly less massive than their companions can already lie on the rapid-transfer side of this model. For the lower threshold is , and for every positive satisfies the strict inequality. There is no finite upper bound on from this criterion. Since the paper does not specify , the wind case has a conditional range rather than a unique numerical cutoff.