---
author:
- 'Matthew R. Bate'
title: Recent Advances in Binary Star Formation Using SPH
---

Introduction
============

The Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) numerical method was introduced by Lucy [@Lucy77] and Gingold and Monaghan [@GinMon77]. Its first application was in the field of star formation, where it was used to study whether or not a rapidly-rotating polytrope could undergo fission to form a close binary system [@Lucy77; @GinMon78]. Since this initial application, SPH has been widely used in the study of star formation, for example [@GinMon81; @MiyHayNar84; @Lattanzioetal85; @Durisenetal86; @SigKla97; @BonBas91; @BatBonPri95; @Heller93; @NelPap93; @ArtLub94; @Larwoodetal96; @Nelsonetal98; @VanCam98; @Chapmanetal92].

SPH is has many attributes which make it particularly well suited to the study of star formation. SPH is Lagrangian and does not require a computational grid. Thus, it can efficiently follow problems with large density contrasts since computational effort is not wasted simulating the low-density regions. Also, recent SPH implementations [@Evrard88; @HerKat89; @Benz90; @Monaghan92] use spatially and temporally varying smoothing lengths so that the resolution increases automatically with increasing density; the complex multi-grid and adaptive-grid schemes that are used for finite difference methods are avoided.

In this proceedings, we review some of the recent advances in the study of binary 