It Takes Two to Tango: How Binary Stars Evolve into Gravitational Wave Sources

With the discovery of dozens of merging black holes and neutron stars by gravitational wave observatories over the past five years, the study of the complexities of binary star evolution physics – including mass transfer, tides, and r-process nucleosynthesis – has taken on a new urgency. In this talk, I will describe the current status of binary evolution models as well as several critical shortcomings that I am working to systematically address. I will focus on both improvements to physical processes, such as the common envelope in which a neutron star or black hole becomes engulfed within a giant star’s envelope, as well as the introduction of modern statistical and machine learning methods using dedicated supercomputers.