Related papers: The evolutionary status of the blue hook stars in …
There is now strong evidence that some stars have been born with He mass fractions as high as $Y \approx 0.40$ (e.g., in $\omega$ Centauri). However, the advanced evolution, chemical yields, and final fates of He-rich stars are largely…
The Horizontal Branch (HB) second parameter of Globular Clusters (GCs) is a major open issue in stellar evolution. Large photometric and spectroscopic databases allow a re-examination of this issue. We derive median and extreme (90% of the…
We use the Cambridge stellar evolution code STARS to model the evolution of 5-7 solar mass zero-metallicity stars. With enhanced resolution at the hydrogen and helium burning shell in the AGB phases, we are able to model the entire…
It is becoming clear that `self--pollution' by the ejecta of massive asymptotic giant branch stars has an important role in the early chemical evolution of globular cluster stars, producing CNO abundance spreads which are observed also at…
Blue horizontal-branch (BHB) stars are evolved low-mass objects that have completed their core hydrogen burning main-sequence (MS) stage and have lost significant mass during the red giant phase culminating in the helium flash. We determine…
The efficiency of convection in stars affects many aspects of their evolution and remains one of the key-open questions in stellar modelling. In particular, the size of the mixed core in core-He-burning low-mass stars is still uncertain and…
The double main sequence identified in the globular cluster Omega Centauri has been interpreted using isochrones to indicate a large variation in the abundance of helium. If true, a helium enhancement carries strong implications for the…
The evolution of helium stars with masses of 1.5 - 6.7 M_sun in binary systems with a 1.4 M_sun neutron-star companion is presented. Such systems are assumed to be the remnants of Be/X-ray binaries with B-star masses in the range of 8 - 20…
The most massive Galactic globular cluster omega Cen appears to have two, or perhaps more, distinct main sequences. Its bluest main sequence is at the centre of debate because it has been suggested to have an extremely high helium abundance…
Helium-burning stars, in particular Cepheids, are especially difficult to model, as the choice of free parameters can greatly impact the shape of the blue loops - the part of the evolutionary track at which instability strip is crossed.…
Extreme helium stars are very rare low-mass supergiants in a late stage of evolution. They are probably contracting to become white dwarfs following a violent phase of evolution which caused them to become hydrogen-deficient giants,…
We explore the hypothesis, that helium stars in a certain mass range can evolve to a carbon core explosion similar to what is widely accepted as an explanation for the SN I phenomenon. This should happen when their carbon-oxygen core grows…
The evolution of helium stars with initial masses in the range 1.6 to 120 Msun is studied, including the effects of mass loss by winds. These stars are assumed to form in binary systems when their expanding hydrogenic envelopes are promptly…
We consider the origin of the UV bright phase of metal-rich helium-burning stars, the slow blue phase (SBP), that was predicted by various earlier works. Based on improved physics including OPAL opacities, we confirm the existence of the…
Neutrino losses play a crucial role in the evolution of massive stars. We study the neutrino luminosity of stars ranging from 20 to 90 M_{\odot} from Zero Age Main Sequence (ZAMS) to Fe Core Collapse (FeCC) with different rotation and…
Hot subdwarf B (sdB) and O (sdO) type stars are evolved helium-burning objects that lost their hydrogen envelope before the helium flash when their progenitors were close to the tip of the red giant branch. They populate the extreme…
95% of all stars end their lives as white dwarfs. About 20% of the hot post-AGB stars are hydrogen deficient. Most of these are the result of a late helium-shell flash, but the evolutionary status of a fraction of about 10-20% of the…
Recently, the study of globular cluster (GC) CMDs has shown that some of them harbor multiple populations with different chemical compositions and/or ages. In the first case, the most common candidate is a spread in the initial helium…
We assume that the strong convection during core helium flash of low mass red giant branch (RBG) stars excite waves that propagate to the envelope, and find that the energy that these waves deposit in the envelope causes envelope expansion…
Blue horizontal-branch (BHB) stars with $T_{\rm eff}$ approximately larger than 11500 K show several observational anomalies. In globular clusters, they exhibit low rotational velocities, abundance anomalies (as compared to cluster…