Reader for Roche

Visualization and analysis tool for drawing Roche lobes of evolving binaries. Roche can be used as a stand alone program reading data from the command line or from a file which is generated by SeBa. Eventually Roche should be able to read from any other binary evolution program.

Roche requires starlab (version 4.1.1 or later) and pgplot libraries. The latest version of starlab can be obtained from the starlab web site. The pgplot package can be obtained from the pgplot web site.

Working of the program
The Roche-lobe is drawn in Rsun. The original primary star is always printed on the left and its companion to the left. Normally a star is represented by a circle with the appropriate size. When Roche-lobe filling, the star is not circular but Roche-lobe filling. The stellar core is drawn as a solid circle, the size of which equals the ratio of the stellar mass to the core mass: So the size of the represents its mass, not its actual radius. The color of the star represents its effective temperature (scale bar to the left). The center-of-mass of the binary system is indicated with a vertical dotted line.

The image gives a representation of the two stars in their Roche lobes, the center-of-mass (dotted line), a size bar (top left) and the temperature scale bar (to the left). In addition the time (top left) is give in million years as well as a representation of the binary system in SPZFV format (see Portegies Zwart & Verbunt, 1996, A&A 309, 179). The top right also indicates the state of the binary and, if applicable, the time scale on which mass transfer occurred in the lest step. on the top left corner the masses of the two stars (in Msun) and the orbital eccentricity are given. Various output formats are available. The output can be selected with the -f command line option.

0	series of ps files with name SeBa_????.ps
1	series of gif files with name SeBa_????.gif
2	single ps file
3	single gif file
4	xwindows screen (only for command line input)

download entire source code of roche.tar.gz

roche.tar.gz contains the following files:

README	This file
Makefile	Makefile (based on starlab distribution 4.1.1 or earlier)
roche.C	Takes binary parameters (semi-major axis, eccentricity, primary and secondary stellar parameters) and constructs a ps-file or other graphics of a Roche-lobe with the stars inside.
roche.h	Header file for roche.C
example.in	Example input file, generated with SeBa
example.log	Output from roche from the input file example.in
example.ps	The resultant postscript file from running % roche -f 2 < example.in
roche.txt	Text version of manybody.org/roche html page.

Typical command line (generates : example.log and roche.ps)
% roche < example.in >& example.log

For an example of the working of roche try http://www.manybody.org/cgi-bin/starlab/binary_demo.pl.
For more information see: http://www.manybody.org


26 February 2003
Simon F. Portegies Zwart

Version log:
Version 1.1: Extended for use with McScatter by SPZ on 23 April 2003
The program (version 1.1 and later) is compatible with the McScatter package. The output generated by McScatter is implemented in the SeBa.data output file, coded such that roche knows what to do. The presentation of the dynamical scatter events is currently in the form of a text file (SeBa_????.txt).