Distinguishing between light curves of ellipsoidal variables with massive dark companions, contact binaries, and semidetached binaries using principal component analysis

PhD student Milan Pešta submitted a paper on Distinguishing between light curves of ellipsoidal variables with massive dark companions, contact binaries, and semidetached binaries using principal component analysis. The paper is now under review in A&A.

About

We are interested in connecting theory, observations, and data modelling of time-domain phenomena in astronomy. This includes transients such as stellar mergers and core-collapse supernovae, persistent variable sources such as eclipsing binaries and pulsating stars, and stellar dynamics. We do (radiation)(magneto)hydrodynamics on supercomputers, semi-analytic models, and machine learning of astronomical data. Come meet us at Science coffee every Tuesday and Thursday at 2.30pm in KVAS room at ITP.

We are supported by the ERC Starting grant Cat-In-hAT to develop new computational methods to study binary star mergers, common envelope, and the associated transients. We are also support by Czech Science Foundation to study mass transfer in binaries. In the past, we received Czech-American collaboration grant from the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports to participate in the ASAS-SN survey and the Primus award PRIMUS/SCI/17 from the Charles University.