From Canonical to Enhanced Extra Mixing in Low-Mass Red Giants: Tidally Locked Binaries

Stellar models which incorporate simple diffusion or shear induced mixing are used to describe canonical extra mixing in low mass red giants of low and solar metallicity. These models are able to simultaneously explain the observed Li and CN abundance changes along upper red giant branch (RGB) in field low-metallicity stars and match photometry, rotation and carbon isotopic ratios for stars in the old open cluster M67. The shear mixing model requires that main sequence (MS) progenitors of upper RGB stars possessed rapidly rotating radiative cores and that specific angular momentum was conserved in each of their mass shells during their evolution. We surmise that solar-type stars will not experience canonical extra mixing on the RGB because their more efficient MS spin-down resulted in solid-body rotation, as revealed by helioseismological data for the Sun. Thus, RGB stars in the old, high metallicity cluster NGC 6791 should show no evidence for mixing in their carbon isotopic ratios. We develop the idea that canonical extra mixing in a giant component of a binary system may be switched to its enhanced mode with much faster and somewhat deeper mixing as a result of the giant's tidal spin-up. This scenario can explain photometric and composition peculiarities of RS CVn binaries. The tidally enforced enhanced extra mixing might contribute to the star-to-star abundance variations of O, Na and Al in globular clusters. This idea may be tested with observations of carbon isotopic ratios and CN abundances in RS CVn binaries.Comment: 47 pages, 19 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

The Abundance Evolution of Oxygen, Sodium and Magnesium in Extremely Metal-Poor Intermediate Mass Stars: Implications for the Self-Polution Scenario in Globular Clusters

We present full stellar evolution and parametric models of the surface abundance evolution of O16, Ne22, Na23 and the magnesium isotopes in an extremely metal-poor intermediate mass star M_ZAMS=5M_sun, Z=0.0001. O16 and Ne22 are injected into the envelope by the third dredge-up following thermal pulses on the asymptotic giant branch. These species and the initially present Mg24 are depleted by hot bottom burning (HBB) during the interpulse phase. As a result, Na23, Mg25 and Mg26 are enhanced. If the HBB temperatures are sufficiently high for this process to deplete oxygen efficiently, Na23 is first produced and then depleted during the interpulse phase. Although the simultaneous depletion of O16 and enhancement of Na23 is possible, the required fine tuning of the dredge-up and HBB casts some doubt on the robustness of this process as the origin of the O-Na anti-correlation observed in globular cluster stars. However, a very robust prediction of our models are low Mg24/Mg25 and Mg24/Mg26 ratios whenever significant O16 depletion can be achieved. This seems to be in stark contrast with recent observations of the magnesium isotopic ratios in the globular cluster NGC6752.Comment: ApJ Letters, in pres

Hydra Observations of Aluminum Abundances in the Red Giants of the Globular Clusters M80 and NGC 6752

Aluminum and other metal abundances were determined in 21 red giants in the globular clusters NGC 6752 and M80 as part of a larger study to determine whether the aluminum distribution on the red giant branch is related to the second parameter effect that causes clusters of similar metallicity to display different horizontal branch morphologies. The observations were obtained of the Al I lines near 6700 Angstroms with the CTIO Blanco 4-m telescope and Hydra multi-object spectrograph. The spectra have a resolving power of 18000 or 9400, with typical S/N ratios of 100-200. Mean [Fe/H] values obtained from the spectra are -1.58 for NGC 6752 and -1.73 for M80; this represents the first spectroscopic iron abundance determination for M80. Both NGC 6752 and M80 display a spread in aluminum abundance, with mean [Al/Fe] ratios of +0.51 and +0.37, respectively. No trend in the variation of the mean Al abundance with position on the giant branch is discernible in either cluster with our small sample.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figures, Accepted to AJ, uses aastex V5.

Fluorine Abundance Variations as a Signature of Enhanced Extra Mixing in Red Giants of the Globular Cluster M4

We show that enhanced extra mixing in low-mass red giants can result in a fluorine abundance that is correlated with abundance variations of other elements participating in H burning, such as C, N, O and Na. This finding is used to explain the fluorine abundance variations recently found in bright red giants of the globular cluster M4.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Ap