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A brief review of various methods to calculate radiative accelerations for stellar evolution and an analysis of their limitations are followed by applications to Pop I and Pop II stars. Recent applications to Horizontal Branch (HB) star evolution are also described. It is shown that models including atomic diffusion satisfy Schwarzschilds criterion on the interior side of the core boundary on the HB without the introduction of overshooting. Using stellar evolution models starting on the Main Sequence and calculated throughout evolution with atomic diffusion, radiative accelerations are shown to lead to abundance anomalies similar to those observed on the HB of M15.
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Atomic diffusion has been recognized as an important process that has to be considered in any computations of stellar models. In solar-type and cooler stars, this process is dominated by gravitational settling, which is now included in most stellar evolution codes. In hotter stars, radiative accelerations compete with gravity and become the dominant ingredient in the diffusion flux for most heavy elements. Introducing radiative accelerations into the computations of stellar models modifies the internal element distribution and may have major consequences on the stellar structure. Coupling these processes with hydrodynamical stellar motions has important consequences that need to be investigated in detail. We aim to include the computations of radiative accelerations in a stellar evolution code (here the TGEC code) using a simplified method (SVP) so that it may be coupled with sophisticated macroscopic motions. We also compare the results with those of the Montreal code in specific cases for validation and study the consequences of these coupled processes on accurate models of A- and early-type stars. We implemented radiative accelerations computations into the Toulouse-Geneva stellar evolution code following the semi-analytical prescription proposed by Alecian and LeBlanc. This allows more rapid computations than the full description used in the Montreal code. We present results for A-type stellar models computed with this updated version of TGEC and compare them with similar published models obtained with the Montreal evolution code. We discuss the consequences for the coupling with macroscopic motions, including thermohaline convection.
The single-valued parameter (SVP) method is a parametric method that offers the possibility of computing radiative accelerations in stellar interiors much faster than other methods. It has been implemented in a few stellar evolution numerical codes for about a decade. In the present paper, we describe improvements we have recently brought in the process of preparing, from atomic/opacity databases, the SVP tables that are needed to use the method, and their extension to a larger stellar mass domain (from 1 to 10 solar mass) on the main-sequence. We discuss the validity domain of the method. We also present the website from where new tables and codes can be freely accessed and implemented in stellar evolution codes.
Chemical element transport processes are among the crucial physical processes needed for precise stellar modelling. Atomic diffusion by gravitational settling nowadays is usually taken into account, and is essential for helioseismic studies. On the other hand, radiative accelerations are rarely accounted for, act differently on the various chemical elements, and can strongly counteract gravity in some stellar mass domains. In this study we aim at determining whether radiative accelerations impact the structure of solar-like oscillating main-sequence stars observed by asteroseismic space missions. We implemented the calculation of radiative accelerations in the CESTAM code using the Single-Valued Parameter method. We built and compared several grids of stellar models including gravitational settling, but some with and others without radiative accelerations. We found that radiative accelerations may not be neglected for stellar masses larger than 1.1~M$_{odot}$ at solar metallicity. The difference in age due to their inclusion in models can reach 9% for the more massive stars of our grids. We estimated that the percentage of the PLATO core program stars whose modelling would require radiative accelerations ranges between 33 and 58% depending on the precision of the seismic data. We conclude that, in the context of Kepler, TESS, and PLATO missions, which provide (or will provide) high quality seismic data, radiative accelerations can have a significant effect when inferring the properties of solar-like oscillators properly. This is particularly important for age inferences. However, the net effect for each individual star results from the competition between atomic diffusion including radiative accelerations and other internal transport processes. This will be investigated in a forthcoming companion paper.
When modelling stars with masses larger than 1.2Msun with no observed chemical peculiarity, atomic diffusion is often neglected because, on its own, it causes unrealistic surface abundances compared with those observed. The reality is that atomic diffusion is in competition with other transport processes. The purpose of this study is to quantify the opposite or conjugated effects of atomic diffusion and rotationally induced mixing in stellar models of low mass stars. Our second goal is to estimate the impact of neglecting both rotational mixing and atomic diffusion in stellar parameter inferences for stars with masses larger than 1.3Msun. Using the AIMS code, we infer the masses and ages of a set of representative artificial stars for which models were computed with the CESTAM evolution code, taking into account rotationally induced mixing and atomic diffusion, including radiative accelerations. We show that for masses lower than 1.3Msun, rotation dominates the transport of chemical elements, and strongly reduces the effect of atomic diffusion, with net surface abundance modifications similar to solar ones. At larger mass, atomic diffusion and rotation are competing equally. Above 1.44Msun, atomic diffusion dominates in stellar models with initial rotation smaller than 80km.s-1 producing a chemical peculiarity which is not observed in Kepler-legacy stars. This indicates that a transport process of chemical elements is missing. Importantly, neglecting rotation and atomic diffusion (including radiative accelerations) in the models, when inferring the parameters of F-type stars, may lead to errors of 5%, 2.5% and 25% respectively for stellar masses, radii and ages. Atomic diffusion (including radiative accelerations) and rotational mixing should be taken into account in stellar models in order to determine accurate stellar parameters.
Here, we compare radiative accelerations (g_rad) derived from the new Opacity Project (OP) data with those computed from OPAL and some previous data from OP. For the case where we have full data from OPAL, the differences in the Rosseland mean opacities between OPAL and the new OP data are within 12% and less than 30% between new OP and previous OP data (OP1 at CDS). The radiative accelerations g_rad differ at up to the 17% level when compared to OPAL and up to the 38% level when compared to OP1. The comparison with OP1 on a larger (rho-T) space gives a difference of up to 40% for g_rad(C). And it increases for heavier elements. The differences increase for heavier elements reaching 60% for Si and 65% for S and Fe. We also constructed four representative stellar models in order to compare the new OP accelerations with prior published results that used OPAL data. The Rosseland means overall agree better than 10% for all of our cases. For the accelerations, the comparisons with published values yield larger differences in general. The published OPAL accelerations for carbon are even larger relative to OP compare to what our direct comparisons would indicate. Potential reasons for this puzzling behavior are discussed. In light of the significant differences in the inferred acceleration rates, theoretical errors should be taken into account when comparing models with observations. The implications for stellar evolution are briefly discussed. The sensitivity of g_rad to the atomic physics may provide a useful test of different opacity sources.
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