Binary stellar systems are immensely important for our understanding of the universe as well as various
astronomical phenomena. I will talk about the motivation for my research project, the Luminous Red Nova eruption
of V1309 Sco, which turned out to be the result of the merger of a contact binary system. I will elaborate on
current issues in our understanding of contact binary systems, as well as common envelope evolution. I will also
present some results on dynamical mass transfers and mergers of close binary systems through numerical modeling
and hydrodynamic simulations.
This is the first attempt in the astrophysics community to simulate binary interactions where both the
components have bipolytropic equation of state, with a fully resolved core and envelope structure.
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