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Wolf-Rayet stars as a diagnostic of internal mixing processes in massive mass losing stars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

N. Langer*
Affiliation:
Universitäts-Sternwarte Göttingen, Geismarlandstraße 11, D–3400 Göttingen, F.R.G.

Extract

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Massive stars (MZAMS ≳ 30 M) develop during their observable hydrostatic evolutionary phases — i.e. central H- and He-burning — three different large scale convective zones, which are: 1) The H-burning convective core, 2) the intermediate convective shell (ICZ) above the hydrogen shell source, which forms at time of hydrogen exhaustion, and 3) the He-burning convective core. The spatial extent of these convective regions, wherein the chemical structure is rapidly homogenised, can be predicted from theory only with a large uncertainty. Different assumptions on the efficiency of these mixing processes in stellar evolution calculations lead to quite different evolutionary pictures for massive stars, especially regarding their Wolf-Rayet (WR) phases. On the other side, many observational data concerning WR stars became available in recent years. For this reason, we attempt to perform a comparison of theoretical evolutionary sequences with observed properties of WR stars in order to derive restrictions on the efficiency of the three mixing processes mentioned above.

Type
Part I. Chemical Peculiarities as Probe of Stellar Evolution
Copyright
Copyright © Springer-Verlag 1988

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