Adiabatic Mass Loss in Binary Stars. III.

We illustrate the general adiabatic response of 3.2M{odot} donor stars at different evolutionary stages. We extend our study to a grid of donor stars with different masses (from 0.1 to 100 M{sun} with Z=0.02) and at different evolutionary stages. We proceed to present our criteria for dynamically unstable mass transfer in both tabular and graphical forms.

For red giant branch (RGB) and asymptotic giant branch (AGB) donors in systems with such mass ratios, they may have convective envelopes deep enough to evolve into common envelopes on a thermal timescale, if the donor star overfills its outer Lagrangian radius. Our results show that the RGB and AGB stars tend to be more stable than previously believed, and this may be helpful to explain the abundance of observed post-AGB binary stars with an orbital period of around 1000 days.