scholarly journals Lithium in metal-poor red giants

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (S268) ◽  
pp. 361-362
Author(s):  
Laimons Začs ◽  
Arturs Barzdis

AbstractThe lithium abundance was calculated for five metal-poor red giant stars from Li i doublet at 6707 Å by fitting the observed high-resolution spectra with synthetic spectra. The lithium abundance was found to be low in all stars, logϵ(Li) ≤ 1.8, confirming lithium depletion on the red giant and asymptotic giant branch.

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (S268) ◽  
pp. 301-309
Author(s):  
Verne V. Smith

AbstractConnections between observations of the lithium abundance in various types of red giants and stellar evolution are discussed here. The emphasis is on three main topics; 1) the depletion of Li as stars ascend the red giant branch for the first time, 2) the synthesis of 7Li in luminous and massive asymptotic giant branch stars via the mechanism of hot-bottom burning, and 3) the possible multiple sources of excess Li abundances found in a tiny fraction of various types of G and K giants.


2020 ◽  
Vol 497 (1) ◽  
pp. 1008-1014
Author(s):  
G Dréau ◽  
M S Cunha ◽  
M Vrard ◽  
P P Avelino

ABSTRACT The space-borne missions CoRoT and Kepler have revealed numerous mixed modes in red giant stars. These modes carry a wealth of information about red giant cores, but are of limited use when constraining rapid structural variations in their envelopes. This limitation can be circumvented if we have access to the frequencies of the pure acoustic dipolar modes in red giants, i.e. the dipole modes that would exist in the absence of coupling between gravity and acoustic waves. We present a pilot study aimed at evaluating the implications of using these pure acoustic mode frequencies in seismic studies of the helium structural variation in red giants. The study is based on artificial seismic data for a red giant branch stellar model, bracketing seven acoustic dipole radial orders around νmax. The pure acoustic dipole-mode frequencies are derived from a fit to the mixed-mode period spacings and then used to compute the pure acoustic dipole-mode second differences. The pure acoustic dipole-mode second differences inferred through this procedure follow the same oscillatory function as the radial-mode second differences. The additional constraints brought by the dipolar modes allow us to adopt a more complete description of the glitch signature when performing the fit to the second differences. The amplitude of the glitch retrieved from this fit is 15${{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ smaller than that from the fit based on the radial modes alone. Also, we find that thanks to the additional constraints, a bias in the inferred glitch location, found when adopting the simpler description of the glitch, is avoided.


2020 ◽  
Vol 635 ◽  
pp. A165
Author(s):  
J. Christensen-Dalsgaard ◽  
V. Silva Aguirre ◽  
S. Cassisi ◽  
M. Miller Bertolami ◽  
A. Serenelli ◽  
...  

Contact. The large quantity of high-quality asteroseismic data that have been obtained from space-based photometric missions and the accuracy of the resulting frequencies motivate a careful consideration of the accuracy of computed oscillation frequencies of stellar models, when applied as diagnostics of the model properties. Aims. Based on models of red-giant stars that have been independently calculated using different stellar evolution codes, we investigate the extent to which the differences in the model calculation affect the model oscillation frequencies and other asteroseismic diagnostics. Methods. For each of the models, which cover four different masses and different evolution stages on the red-giant branch, we computed full sets of low-degree oscillation frequencies using a single pulsation code and, from these frequencies, typical asteroseismic diagnostics. In addition, we carried out preliminary analyses to relate differences in the oscillation properties to the corresponding model differences. Results. In general, the differences in asteroseismic properties between the different models greatly exceed the observational precision of these properties. This is particularly true for the nonradial modes whose mixed acoustic and gravity-wave character makes them sensitive to the structure of the deep stellar interior and, hence, to details of their evolution. In some cases, identifying these differences led to improvements in the final models presented here and in Paper I; here we illustrate particular examples of this. Conclusions. Further improvements in stellar modelling are required in order fully to utilise the observational accuracy to probe intrinsic limitations in the modelling and improve our understanding of stellar internal physics. However, our analysis of the frequency differences and their relation to stellar internal properties provides a striking illustration of the potential, in particular, of the mixed modes of red-giant stars for the diagnostics of stellar interiors.


2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (S301) ◽  
pp. 325-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Hekker ◽  
A. Mazumdar

AbstractThanks to significant improvements in high-resolution spectrographs and the launch of dedicated space missions MOST, CoRoT and Kepler, the number of subgiants and red-giant stars with detected oscillations has increased significantly over the last decade. The amount of detail that can now be resolved in the oscillation patterns does allow for in-depth investigations of the internal structures of these stars. One phenomenon that plays an important role in such studies are mixed modes. These are modes that carry information of the inner radiative region as well as from the convective outer part of the star allowing to probe different depths of the stars.Here, we describe mixed modes and highlight some recent results obtained using mixed modes observed in subgiants and red-giant stars.


2020 ◽  
Vol 639 ◽  
pp. A63
Author(s):  
Patrick Gaulme ◽  
Jason Jackiewicz ◽  
Federico Spada ◽  
Drew Chojnowski ◽  
Benoît Mosser ◽  
...  

Oscillating red-giant stars have provided a wealth of asteroseismic information regarding their interiors and evolutionary states, which enables detailed studies of the Milky Way. The objective of this work is to determine what fraction of red-giant stars shows photometric rotational modulation, and understand its origin. One of the underlying questions is the role of close binarity in this population, which relies on the fact that red giants in short-period binary systems (less than 150 days or so) have been observed to display strong rotational modulation. We selected a sample of about 4500 relatively bright red giants observed by Kepler, and show that about 370 of them (∼8%) display rotational modulation. Almost all have oscillation amplitudes below the median of the sample, while 30 of them are not oscillating at all. Of the 85 of these red giants with rotational modulation chosen for follow-up radial-velocity observation and analysis, 34 show clear evidence of spectroscopic binarity. Surprisingly, 26 of the 30 nonoscillators are in this group of binaries. On the contrary, about 85% of the active red giants with detectable oscillations are not part of close binaries. With the help of the stellar masses and evolutionary states computed from the oscillation properties, we shed light on the origin of their activity. It appears that low-mass red-giant branch stars tend to be magnetically inactive, while intermediate-mass ones tend to be highly active. The opposite trends are true for helium-core burning (red clump) stars, whereby the lower-mass clump stars are comparatively more active and the higher-mass ones are less active. In other words, we find that low-mass red-giant branch stars gain angular momentum as they evolve to clump stars, while higher-mass ones lose angular momentum. The trend observed with low-mass stars leads to possible scenarios of planet engulfment or other merging events during the shell-burning phase. Regarding intermediate-mass stars, the rotation periods that we measured are long with respect to theoretical expectations reported in the literature, which reinforces the existence of an unidentified sink of angular momentum after the main sequence. This article establishes strong links between rotational modulation, tidal interactions, (surface) magnetic fields, and oscillation suppression. There is a wealth of physics to be studied in these targets that is not available in the Sun.


2000 ◽  
Vol 177 ◽  
pp. 71-80
Author(s):  
Bertrand Plez

I review the current status of model atmospheres for red giants, with special emphasis on recent progress and newer grids. I draw attention to some specific problems regarding opacity sources and present current and forthcoming efforts in cool-star atmospheric modeling.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (A29B) ◽  
pp. 525-528
Author(s):  
Lagarde Nadège

AbstractThe availability of asteroseismic constraints for a large sample of red-giant stars from the CoRoT and Kepler missions paves the way for various statistical studies of the seismic properties of stellar populations. We use a detailed spectroscopic study of 19 CoRoT red-giant stars (Morel et al. 2014) to compare theoretical stellar evolution models to observations of the open cluster NGC 6633 and field stars. This study is already published in Lagarde et al. (2015)


1983 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
pp. 445-448
Author(s):  
Robert E. Stencel

New data indicate that red giants are surrounded by geometrically thick chromospheres of several stellar radii extent. Such chromospheres occur among stars which apparently lack coronae. Maintenance of this extended warm region may require non-compressional wave heating of a magnetic character, and this may provide a crucial clue to the mechanism of rapid mass loss from red giant stars.


2019 ◽  
Vol 492 (1) ◽  
pp. L50-L55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Earl Patrick Bellinger

ABSTRACT Owing to their simplicity and ease of application, seismic scaling relations are widely used to determine the properties of stars exhibiting solar-like oscillations, such as solar twins and red giants. So far, no seismic scaling relations for determining the ages of red giant stars have been developed. Such relations would be desirable for Galactic Archaeology, which uses stellar ages to map the history of the Milky Way. The ages of red giants must instead be estimated with reference to grids of theoretical stellar models, which can be computationally intensive. Here, I present an exhaustive search for scaling age relations involving different combinations of observable quantities. The candidate scaling relations are calibrated and tested using more than 1000 red giant stars whose ages were obtained via grid-based modelling. I report multiple high-quality scaling relations for red giant branch stars, the best of which are shown to be approximately as accurate as grid-based modelling with typical uncertainties of 15 per cent. Additionally, I present new scaling mass and radius relations for red giants as well.


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