The IAU-EC Summer Talk Series 2026 #2 with Dr. Hila Glanz, 2025 IAU Division G

The IAU Early-Career Summer Talk Series 2026 celebrates excellence in astronomy by bringing together IAU Prize Winners, who will share the research that earned them international recognition. Through these talks, participants will gain insight into cutting-edge science, the journey behind award-winning research, and the experiences of outstanding early-career astronomers from around the world. Title (Ep. 2): “Stellar Interactions: Accretion, Migration and Explosions” by Dr. Hila Glanz Abstract: Multi-star systems are abundant, and their evolution can lead to diverse, sometimes exotic, outcomes. These systems experience episodic mass transfer and common envelope evolution (CEE), which can significantly alter orbital dynamics through interactions with gaseous envelopes. While CEE is well-known in compact binaries, it also plays a key role in hierarchical triple systems. In this talk, I will present 3D hydrodynamical simulations of CEE, including triple-common envelope evolution. I will consider two scenarios based on the distant third star—one in which the third star is the donor (circumstellar case) and one in which it is the accretor (circumbinary case). These interactions can result in stellar mergers, unique compact binary systems, explosive transients, and gravitational wave sources. I will also discuss how these simulations reveal changes in orbital eccentricity during inspiral, providing constraints on the CEE process. Finally, I will examine explosive outcomes from remnant white dwarf mergers or collisions and how to identify configurations that might trigger a detonation. Bio: Dr. Hila Glanz is a Burke Prize Fellow in Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics at Caltech, as well as a Rothschild Fellow and a Zuckerman STEM Leadership Fellow. She received all of her degrees from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, including a dual BSc in Physics and Computer Science and an MSc and PhD in Physics under the supervision of Prof. Hagai Perets. Her doctoral work was recognized with the 2025 Israel Physical Society Prize for the best doctoral thesis and the 2025 IAU PhD Prize. Her research focuses on the evolution and explosive outcomes of interacting and multiple-star systems. She combines three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations with radiation and magnetic-field physics to study stellar interactions, from common-envelope evolution to white dwarf mergers and collisions, and their connection to supernovae and other astrophysical transients.