34 research outputs found
Seismology of the Sun : Inference of Thermal, Dynamic and Magnetic Field Structures of the Interior
Recent overwhelming evidences show that the sun strongly influences the
Earth's climate and environment. Moreover existence of life on this Earth
mainly depends upon the sun's energy. Hence, understanding of physics of the
sun, especially the thermal, dynamic and magnetic field structures of its
interior, is very important. Recently, from the ground and space based
observations, it is discovered that sun oscillates near 5 min periodicity in
millions of modes. This discovery heralded a new era in solar physics and a
separate branch called helioseismology or seismology of the sun has started.
Before the advent of helioseismology, sun's thermal structure of the interior
was understood from the evolutionary solution of stellar structure equations
that mimicked the present age, mass and radius of the sun. Whereas solution of
MHD equations yielded internal dynamics and magnetic field structure of the
sun's interior. In this presentation, I review the thermal, dynamic and
magnetic field structures of the sun's interior as inferred by the
helioseismology.Comment: To be published in the proceedings of the meeting "3rd International
Conference on Current Developments in Atomic, Molecular, Optical and Nano
Physics with Applications", December 14-16, 2011, New Delhi, Indi
Prospects for asteroseismology
The observational basis for asteroseismology is being dramatically
strengthened, through more than two years of data from the CoRoT satellite, the
flood of data coming from the Kepler mission and, in the slightly longer term,
from dedicated ground-based facilities. Our ability to utilize these data
depends on further development of techniques for basic data analysis, as well
as on an improved understanding of the relation between the observed
frequencies and the underlying properties of the stars. Also, stellar modelling
must be further developed, to match the increasing diagnostic potential of the
data. Here we discuss some aspects of data interpretation and modelling,
focussing on the important case of stars with solar-like oscillations.Comment: Proc. HELAS Workshop on 'Synergies between solar and stellar
modelling', eds M. Marconi, D. Cardini & M. P. Di Mauro, Astrophys. Space
Sci., in the press Revision: correcting abscissa labels on Figs 1 and
Low-mass pre--main-sequence stars in the Magellanic Clouds
[Abridged] The stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF) suggests that sub-solar
stars form in very large numbers. Most attractive places for catching low-mass
star formation in the act are young stellar clusters and associations, still
(half-)embedded in star-forming regions. The low-mass stars in such regions are
still in their pre--main-sequence (PMS) evolutionary phase. The peculiar nature
of these objects and the contamination of their samples by the evolved
populations of the Galactic disk impose demanding observational techniques for
the detection of complete numbers of PMS stars in the Milky Way. The Magellanic
Clouds, the companion galaxies to our own, demonstrate an exceptional star
formation activity. The low extinction and stellar field contamination in
star-forming regions of these galaxies imply a more efficient detection of
low-mass PMS stars than in the Milky Way, but their distance from us make the
application of special detection techniques unfeasible. Nonetheless, imaging
with the Hubble Space Telescope yield the discovery of solar and sub-solar PMS
stars in the Magellanic Clouds from photometry alone. Unprecedented numbers of
such objects are identified as the low-mass stellar content of their
star-forming regions, changing completely our picture of young stellar systems
outside the Milky Way, and extending the extragalactic stellar IMF below the
persisting threshold of a few solar masses. This review presents the recent
developments in the investigation of PMS stars in the Magellanic Clouds, with
special focus on the limitations by single-epoch photometry that can only be
circumvented by the detailed study of the observable behavior of these stars in
the color-magnitude diagram. The achieved characterization of the low-mass PMS
stars in the Magellanic Clouds allowed thus a more comprehensive understanding
of the star formation process in our neighboring galaxies.Comment: Review paper, 26 pages (in LaTeX style for Springer journals), 4
figures. Accepted for publication in Space Science Review
Perspectives in Global Helioseismology, and the Road Ahead
We review the impact of global helioseismology on key questions concerning
the internal structure and dynamics of the Sun, and consider the exciting
challenges the field faces as it enters a fourth decade of science
exploitation. We do so with an eye on the past, looking at the perspectives
global helioseismology offered in its earlier phases, in particular the
mid-to-late 1970s and the 1980s. We look at how modern, higher-quality, longer
datasets coupled with new developments in analysis, have altered, refined, and
changed some of those perspectives, and opened others that were not previously
available for study. We finish by discussing outstanding challenges and
questions for the field.Comment: Invited review; to appear in Solar Physics (24 pages, 6 figures
Implications of the generation of internal gravity waves by penetrative convection for the internal rotation evolution of low-mass stars
Due to the space-borne missions CoRoT and Kepler, noteworthy breakthroughs have been made in our understanding of stellar evolution, and in particular about the angular momentum redistribution in stellar interiors. Indeed, the high-precision seismic data provide with the measurement of the mean core rotation rate for thousands of low-mass stars from the subgiant branch to the red giant branch. All these observations exhibit much lower core rotation rates than expected by current stellar evolution codes and they emphasize the need for an additional transport process. In this framework, internal gravity waves (herefater, IGW) could play a signifivative role since they are known to be able to transport angular momentum. In this work, we estimate the effciency of the transport by the IGW that are generated by penetrative convection at the interface between the convective and the radiative regions. As a first step, this study is based on the comparison between the timescale for the waves to modify a given rotation profile and the contraction/expansion timescale throughout the radiative zone of 1.3M⊙ stellar models. We show that IGW, on their own, are ineffcient to slow down the core rotation of stars on the red giant branch, where the radiative damping becomes strong enough and prevent the IGW from reaching the innermost layers. However, we find that IGW generated by penetrative convection could effciently modify the core rotation of subgiant stars as soon as the amplitude of the radial differential rotation between the core and the base of the convective zone is high enough, with typical values close to the observed rotation rates in these stars. This result argues for the necessity to account for IGW generated by penetrative convection in stellar modeling and in the angular momentum redistribution issue
A new sample of extremely/ultra metal-poor stars
Original article can be found at: http://www.iop.org/ Copyright Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences [Full text of this article is not available in the UHRA]A sample of 30 very metal-poor stars from the Hamburg-European Southern Observatory (ESO) objective-prism survey have been observed at high spectral resolution at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) using the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES). Two of the observed stars are very interesting not only because of their very low iron content, approximately four orders of magnitude lower than the solar value, but also because we detected the neutral lithium resonance line at 670.8 nm. Hydrogen lines suggest that the two observed stars have effective temperatures around 6000-6250K and according to isochrones, they are either on the main-sequence or on the subgiant branch, in which case they would probably be the most metal-poor dwarfs or warm subgiants with lithium detections known. These detections would allow to determine more accurately the slope of the trend of the lithium abundance with [Fe/H] than was possible with samples of unevolved stars restricted to higher metallicities.Peer reviewe