Measuring Tidal Friction in Main-Sequence Sun-Like Stars*

Tidal friction plays an important role in shaping the orbits of binary stars and exoplanet systems with short orbital periods. However, the physical processes that produce this friction are currently not well understood, with multiple competing theoretical models in circulation. Our research group is taking advantage of the recent explosion of observational data to provide empirical measurements of tidal dissipation for comparison to theory and/or directly usable to calculate the tidal evolution of binary stars and exoplanet systems. I will present the gradually emerging picture of tidal friction in Sun-like stars from recent efforts by our group .