BINARY-SINGLE-STAR SCATTERING .3. NUMERICAL EXPERIMENTS FOR EQUAL-MASS HARD BINARIES

Scattering experiments are reported involving hard binaries with binding energies up to a few hundred times larger than the kinetic energy of the incoming field star. The results of these experiments are presented in the form of total and differential cross sections for a variety of processes. Together with the numerical results from Paper I, and the analytic approximations in Papers II and IV in the present series, an accurate description of equal mass binary-single star scattering is now available over a complete range of parameters. An important effect of hard binaries is the heating of star clusters through three-body processes, when stellar collisions can be ignored, as is the case for encounters involving degenerate stars. This effect is illustrated by plotting the average amount of energy exchange between binaries and field stars as a function of binary hardness.