Globular clusters as laboratories for stellar evolution
Abstract
Globular clusters have long been considered the closest approximation to a physicist's laboratory in astrophysics, and as such a near-ideal laboratory for (low-mass) stellar evolution. However, recent observations have cast a shadow on this long-standing paradigm, suggesting the presence of multiple populations with widely different abundance patterns, and -- crucially -- with widely different helium abundances as well. In this review we discuss which features of the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram may be used as helium abundance indicators, and present an overview of available constraints on the helium abundance in globular clusters.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0910.1367,
title = {Globular clusters as laboratories for stellar evolution},
author = {M. Catelan and A. A. R. Valcarce and A. V. Sweigart},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0910.1367},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
12 pages, 6 figures. Invited review, to appear in the proceedings of IAU Symp. 266 (ed. R. de Grijs & J. R. D. Lepine)