{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/revisiting-bondi-hoyle-lyttleton-accretion-in","title":"Geometric correction for wind accretion in binary systems","arxiv_id":"2411.01755","date":"2024-11-04","proceeding":null,"authors":["Emilio Tejeda","Jesús A. Toalá"],"abstract":"The Bondi-Hoyle-Lyttleton (BHL) accretion model is widely used to describe how a compact object accretes material from a companion's stellar wind in binary systems. However, its standard implementation becomes inaccurate when the wind velocity ($v_\\mathrm{w}$) is comparable to or less than the orbital velocity ($v_\\mathrm{o}$), predicting non-physical accretion efficiencies above unity. This limits its applicability to systems with low wind-to-orbital velocity ratios ($w= v_\\mathrm{w} / v_\\mathrm{o} \\leq 1$), such as symbiotic systems. We revisit the implementation of the BHL model and introduce a geometric correction factor that accounts for the varying orientation of the accretion cylinder relative to the wind direction. This correction ensures physically plausible accretion efficiencies ($\\eta \\leq 1$) for all $w$ in circular orbits. Our new implementation naturally predicts the flattening of the accretion efficiency observed in numerical simulations for $w < 1$, without the need for ad hoc adjustments. We also peer into the implications of our prescription for the less-explored case of eccentric orbits, highlighting the key role of the geometric correction factor in shaping the accretion process. We compare our predictions with numerical simulations, finding good agreement for a wide range of parameters. Applications to the symbiotic star R~Aqr and the X-ray binary LS 5039 are presented. This improved implementation offers a more accurate description of wind accretion in binary systems, with implications for stellar evolution, population synthesis, and observational data interpretation.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.01755v3","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.01755v3.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"links_only","authors_date_abstract":"arXiv metadata, CC0 1.0 (https://info.arxiv.org/help/license), from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"revisiting-bondi-hoyle-lyttleton-accretion-in","repo_url":"https://gitlab.com/sevncodes/sevn","is_official":0,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}