3 research outputs found
Echography of young stars reveals their evolution
We demonstrate that a seismic analysis of stars in their earliest
evolutionary phases is a powerful method to identify young stars and
distinguish their evolutionary states. The early star that is born from the
gravitational collapse of a molecular cloud reaches at some point sufficient
temperature, mass and luminosity to be detected. Accretion stops and the
pre-main sequence star that emerges is nearly fully convective and chemically
homogeneous. It will continue to contract gravitationally until the density and
temperature in the core are high enough to start nuclear burning of hydrogen.
We show that there is a relationship between detected pulsation properties for
a sample of young stars and their evolutionary status illustrating the
potential of asteroseismology for the early evolutionary phases.Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures, includes Supplementary Material. Science,
published in Science Express on July 3, 201