Related papers: Observational Constraints for Thermohaline Mixing
It is well known that metal-poor red giant branch (RGB) stars show variations in some elemental abundances, including carbon, due to the internal mixing accompanied by their own in situ CN cycle in the hydrogen burning shell. With our new…
Uncertainties on central mixing in main sequence (MS) and core He-burning (He-B) phases affect key predictions of stellar evolution such as late evolutionary phases, chemical enrichment, ages etc. We propose a test of the extension of…
To reconcile the measurements of 3He/H in Galactic HII regions with high values of 3He in a couple of planetary nebulae, we propose that thermohaline mixing is inhibited by a fossil magnetic field in red giant stars that are descendants of…
During most stages of stellar evolution the nuclear burning of lighter to heavier elements results in a radial composition profile which is stabilizing against buoyant acceleration, with light material residing above heavier material.…
Based on the turbulent convection model (TCM), we investigate chemical mixing in the bottom overshooting region of the convective envelope of intermediate-mass stars, focusing on its influence on the formation and extension of blue loops in…
We conduct a series of comparisons between spectroscopic and photometric observations of globular clusters and stellar models to examine their predictive power. Data from medium-to-high resolution spectroscopic surveys of lithium allow us…
We present the results of an observational study of the efficiency of deep mixing in globular cluster red giants as a function of stellar metallicity. We determine [C/Fe] abundances based on low-resolution spectra taken with the Kast…
Star-to-star abundance variations of C, N, O, Na and Al in globular-cluster red giants have been recently supplemented by the finding that [Mg/Fe] is depleted in stars with extremely large [Al/Fe] (Shetrone 1996a). This and other new…
The influence of rotational mixing on the global parameters and asteroseismic properties of red giant stars is reviewed. While red giants are generally characterised by low surface rotational velocities, they may have been rotating much…
Thermohaline convection (also known as fingering convection or thermohaline mixing) occurs in stellar radiation zones where a sufficient inversion of the mean molecular weight is present. This process mixes chemicals radially and occurs in…
A region of a star that is stable to convection according to the Ledoux criterion may nevertheless undergo additional mixing if the mean molecular weight increases with radius. This process is called fingering (thermohaline) convection and…
Context. The 3He content of Galactic HII regions is very close to that of the Sun and the solar system, and only slightly higher than the primordial 3He abundance as predicted by the standard Big Bang nucleosynthesis. However, the classical…
Using a state-of-the-art cosmological simulation of merging proto-galaxies at high redshift from the FIRE project, with explicit treatments of star formation and stellar feedback in the interstellar medium, we investigate the formation of…
The availability of asteroseismic constraints for a large sample of stars from the missions CoRoT and Kepler paves the way for various statistical studies of the seismic properties of stellar populations. In this paper, we evaluate the…
The process of carbon burning is vital to understanding late stage stellar evolution of massive stars and the conditions of certain supernovae. Carbon burning is a complex problem, involving quantum tunnelling and nuclear molecular states.…
The GES survey using FLAMES at the VLT has obtained high-resolution UVES spectra for a large number of giant stars, allowing a determination of the abundances of the key chemical elements C and N at their surface. The surface abundances of…
Evolved low-mass stars of a wide range of metallicity bear signatures of a non-standard mixing event in their surface abundances of Li, C, and N, and in their 12C/13C ratio. A Na overabundance has also been reported in some giants of open…
We examine the convective core helium burning phase of intermediate mass stars, and investigate the role of coupling of nuclear burning and mixing on the extension and duration of the blue loop phase. We compare the theoretical scenario…
Red giants are evolved stars that have exhausted the supply of hydrogen in their cores and instead burn hydrogen in a surrounding shell. Once a red giant is sufficiently evolved, the helium in the core also undergoes fusion. Outstanding…
Stars with very large mass loss on the red-giant branch can undergo the helium flash while descending the white-dwarf cooling curve. Under these conditions the flash convection zone will mix the hydrogen envelope with the hot helium-…