Observed Lithium Abundances as a Test of Stellar Internal Structure

Extract

The “lithium gap” observed in the Hyades and other galactic clusters by Ann Boesgaard and her collaborators (Boesgaard and Tripicco 1986, Boesgaard 1987, Boesgaard, Budge and Burck 1987) gives a challenge to theoreticians. Indeed a good fit between the theoretical results and the observations will give a clue for our understanding of the stellar internal structure and evolution.

A theoretical explanation of the “lithium gap” by gravitational and radiative diffusion has been proposed by Michaud 1986. In G type stars, the convection zone is too deep for gravitational settling to take place: the density at the bottom of the convection zone is so large that the diffusion time scale exceeds the age of the star. Increasing the effective temperature leads to a decrease of the convection zone, and consequently to a decrease of the diffusion time scale. In F stars it becomes smaller than the stellar age, leading qualitatively to a lithium abundance decrease as observed. When the convection zone is shallow enough, the radiative acceleration on lithium becomes important as lithium is in the hydrogenic form of li III (while it is a bare nucleus, li IV, deeper in the star). This radiative acceleration may prevent lithium settling for hotter F stars. This is a very attractive explanation, which leads to a minimum of the lithium abundance nearly at the place where it is observed in effective temperature. However it suffers from some difficulties: the theory predicts an increase of the lithium abundance larger than normal in the hottest F stars, which is not observed, and the predicted minimum lithium abundance is one or two orders of magnitude higher than the minimum observed in the Hyades. The former may be overcome if mass loss occurs in these stars (Michaud 86). Let us focus on the latter.