Related papers: Effect of diffusion-induced element accumulation o…
Atomic diffusion may lead to heavy element accumulation inside stars in certain specific layers. Iron accumulation in the Z-bump opacity region has been invoked by several authors to quantitatively account for abundance anomalies observed…
Aims. Atomic diffusion, including the effect of radiative accelerations on individual elements, leads to important variations of the chemical composition inside the stars. The accumulation in specific layers of the elements, which are the…
Recent dramatic improvements in the modeling of abundance evolution due to diffusion in A stars have been achieved with the help of monochromatic opacity tables from the OPAL group. An important result in the context of stellar pulsations…
Opacity enhancements for stellar interior conditions have been explored to explain observed pulsation frequencies and to extend the pulsation instability region for B-type main-sequence variable stars. For these stars, the pulsations are…
The effects of opacities in driving pulsations and extending the pulsation instability region for B-type stars (SPB and $\beta$ Cep variables) have recently been explored by, e.g., Walczak et al. 2015, 2017, Daszynska-Daszkiewicz et al.…
The effects of atomic diffusion on internal and surface abundances of A and F pre-main-sequence stars with mass loss are studied in order to determine at what age the effects materialize, as well as to further understand the processes at…
Pulsations in subdwarf B stars are attributed to radiative levitation of iron-group elements in the stellar envelope. Until now, only iron diffusion is accounted for in stellar models used for sdB seismology. However, nickel has also been…
Atomic diffusion in stars can create systematic trends of surface abundances with evolutionary stage. Globular clusters offer useful laboratories to put observational constraints on this theory as one needs to compare abundances in…
Iron-rich layers are known to form in the stellar subsurface through a combination of gravitational settling and radiative levitation. Their presence, nature and detailed structure can affect the excitation process of various stellar…
Abundance trends in heavier elements with evolutionary phase have been shown to exist in the globular cluster NGC 6752 [Fe/H]=-1.6. These trends are a result of atomic diffusion and additional (non-convective) mixing. Studying such trends…
Slowly Pulsating B and $\beta$ Cephei are $\kappa$ mechanism driven pulsating B stars. That $\kappa$ mechanism works since a peak in the opacity due to a high number of atomic transitions from iron-group elements occurs in the area of $\log…
The B-type pulsators known as \beta Cephei and Slowly Pulsating B (SPB) stars present pulsations driven by the \kappa mechanism, which operates thanks to an opacity bump due to the iron group elements. In low-metallicity environments such…
The stability of retrograde mixed modes in rotating B-type stars is investigated. It is found that these modes are susceptible to kappa-mechanism excitation, due to the iron opacity bump at log T ~ 5.3. The findings are discussed in the…
The discovery of $\beta$ Cephei stars in low metallicity environments, as well as the difficulty in theoretically explaining the excitation of the pulsation modes observed in some $\beta$ Cephei and hybrid SPB-$\beta$ Cephei pulsators,…
Chemical composition is an important factor that affects stellar evolution. The element abundance on the stellar surface evolves along the lifetime of the star because of transport processes, including atomic diffusion. However, models of…
The chemical element nickel is of particular interest in stellar physics. In the layers in which the Fe-peak elements dominate the mean opacity (the so-called Z-bump), Ni is the second contributor to the Rosseland opacity after iron,…
At present none of Galactic chemical evolution (GCE) models provides a self-consistent description of observed trends for all iron-peak elements with metallicity simultaneously. The question is whether the discrepancy is due to deficiencies…
The stars of the middle main sequence have relatively quiescent outer layers, and unusual chemical abundance patterns may develop in their atmospheres. The presence of chemical peculiarities reveal the action of such subsurface phenomena as…
Subdwarf B stars show chemical peculiarities that cannot be explained by diffusion theory alone. Both mass loss and turbulence have been invoked to slow down atomic diffusion in order to match observed abundances. The fact that some sdB…
The discovery of beta Cephei stars in low metallicity environments, as well as the difficulty to theoretically explain the excitation of the pulsation modes observed in some beta Cephei and SPB stars, suggest that the iron opacity ``bump''…