Evolution of Am and Ap Stars

Extract

This work is a continuation of the Montréal stellar evolutionary model development (Richard et al., 2001 and references therein) where the effects of atomic diffusion are taken into account for 28 elements (see Turcotte, these proceedings), along with an approximate treatment of turbulent transport (Richer et al., 2000).

We used the CEFF equation of state and the Bahcall nuclear energy generation routine. The Rosseland opacity is computed at each time step, from the OPAL monochromatic opacities for 21 elements (to which we added locally computed spectrum tables for Li, Be, and B) for each mesh point in the model for the current local chemical composition. Convection and semi-convection are taken into account in every species’ diffusion velocity and in the determination of the thermal gradient (Richard et al., 2001). The models also take into account gravitational settling, thermal diffusion, radiative accelerations and turbulent transport. The radiative accelerations are from Richer et al. (1998). The turbulent transport is modeled as a diffusion process (Richer et al., 2000) with diffusion coefficient: D_T = ωD(He)₀ (ρ/ρ₀)ⁿ where D(He)₀ is the Ηe atomic diffusion coefficient at density ρ₀.