Related papers: Blue Loops, Cepheids, and Forays into Axions
Chemical turbulent mixing induced by rotation can affect the internal distribution of mu near the energy-generating core of main-sequence stars, having an effect on the evolutionary tracks similar to that of overshooting. However, this…
The impact of blending by RCGs (red clump giants, or relatively metal-rich red horizontal branch stars) is discussed as it relates to RRab and classical Cepheids, and invariably establishing an improved distance scale. An analysis of OGLE…
Polarization measurements of thermal radiation from magnetic white dwarf (MWD) stars have been proposed as a probe of axion-photon mixing. The radiation leaving the surface of the MWD is unpolarized, but if low-mass axions exist then…
As part of a larger program aimed at better quantifying the uncertainties in stellar computations, we attempt to calibrate the extent of convective overshooting in low to intermediate mass stars by means of eclipsing binary systems. We…
We explore the three-dimensional properties of convective, luminous ($L\approx10^{4.5}-10^{5}L_\odot$), Hydrogen-rich envelopes of Red Supergiants (RSGs) based on radiation hydrodynamic simulations in spherical geometry using…
Light feebly-coupled bosonic particles can efficiently extract the rotational energy of rapidly spinning black holes on sub-astrophysical timescales via a phenomenon known as black hole superradiance. In the case of light axions, the feeble…
Axions are a viable candidate for Cold Dark Matter (CDM) which should generically form minihalos of sub-planetary masses from white-noise isocurvature density fluctuations if the Peccei-Quinn phase transition occurs after inflation. Despite…
The extent of mixed regions around convective zones is one of the biggest uncertainties in stellar evolution. 1D overshooting descriptions introduce a free parameter ($f_{ov}$) that is in general not well constrained from observations.…
We present nonlinear theoretical results concerning the predicted pulsation behaviour of stellar models suitable for the sample of Cepheids belonging to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) star cluster NGC 1866. The blue and red edges of the…
Rotation and mass loss are crucially interlinked properties of massive stars, strongly affecting their evolution and ultimate fate. Massive stars rotating near their breakup limit shed mass centrifugally, creating Be stars with…
Theoretical estimates of the pulsation period change rates in LMC Cepheids are obtained from consistent calculation of stellar evolution and nonlinear stellar pulsation for stars with initial chemical composition X=0.7, Z=0.008, initial…
Recent stellar evolution computations indicate that massive stars in the range ~ 20 - 30 Msun are located in the blue supergiant (BSG) region of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram at two different stages of their life: immediately after the…
The Humphreys-Davidson (HD) limit sets the boundary between evolutionary channels of massive stars that either end their lives as red supergiants (RSGs) or as the hotter blue supergiants (BSGs) and Wolf-Rayet stars. Mixing in the envelopes…
Pulsation period of Cepheids should change as stars evolve through the instability strip. Rates of these changes found by other authors based on the decades-long O-C diagrams show rather good agreement with theoretical predictions. We have…
Although the dependence of convective core overshooting on mass has attracted much attention, no corresponding work exists for overshooting below a convective envelope. We aim to quantify this relationship for pre-main sequence stars of…
The Humphreys-Davidson (HD) limit empirically defines a region of high luminosities (log L > 5.5) and low effective temperatures (T < 20kK) on the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram in which hardly any supergiant stars are observed. Attempts to…
X-ray observations have been made of a sample of 20 classical Cepheids, including two new observations (Polaris and {\it l} Car) reported here. The occurrence of X-ray flux around the pulsation cycle is discussed. Three Cepheids are…
It is well known that the mere location of a Beat Cepheid model in a Period Ratio \vs Period diagram (Petersen diagram) puts constraints on its metallicity Z. But these bounds are sensitive to the mixture of elements that are lumped into…
Classical Cepheids are key probes of both stellar astrophysics and cosmology as standard candles and pulsating variable stars. It is important to understand Cepheids in unprecedented detail in preparation for upcoming GAIA, JWST and…
We investigate the occurrence of classical (type-I) Cepheid variable stars (henceforth: Cepheids) in dynamically evolving star clusters from birth to an age of approximately 300 Myr. The clusters are modelled by the Aarseth code nbody6, and…