On the Evolution of Circumstellar Disks Modified by the Presence of a Binary

Stars form within circumstellar disks, and some binary stars develop circumbinary disks surrounding the pair. Observations suggest that disks that form around binary-star systems are less common than those around single stars. One possible explanation is that binary stars may disrupt or shorten the lifespan of their surrounding disks relative to those around single stars. To investigate this, we used the DISCO hydrodynamics code to compute the lifetimes of circumstellar disks with and without a binary. Our results indicate that binary systems can reduce the lifetime of a circumbinary disk by a modest factor of 2 to 3 compared to disks around single stars. This effect is present when the binary separation is at least one-tenth of the disk radius. While our findings show that binaries can shorten circumbinary disk lifetimes, this alone might not be enough to fully account for the scarcity of these disks.