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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2007
Encounters between binary stars and single stars and between binary stars and other binary stars play a key role in the dynamics of dense stellar systems. In the simple model, in which stars are approximated by point masses, a number of theoretical and numerical results are known. In particular there exist relationships to help to describe the destruction process of binary stars (ionisation) through three-body encounters between binary and single stars. Here we extend these results to the four-body case involving encounters between pairs of binary stars that lead to a disruption of the binaries into single stars.