Stellar evolution computations provide the foundation of several methods applied to study the evolutionary properties of stars and stellar populations, both Galactic and extragalactic. The accuracy ...of the results obtained with these techniques is linked to the accuracy of the stellar models, and in this context the correct treatment of the transport of chemical elements is crucial. Unfortunately, in many respects calculations of the evolution of the chemical abundance profiles in stars are still affected by sometimes sizable uncertainties. Here, we review the various mechanisms of element transport included in the current generation of stellar evolution calculations, how they are implemented, the free parameters and uncertainties involved, the impact on the models and the observational constraints.
The existence of star-to-star light-element abundance variations in massive Galactic and extragalactic star clusters has fairly recently superseded the traditional paradigm of individual clusters ...hosting stars with the same age, and uniform chemical composition. Several scenarios have been put forward to explain the origin of this multiple stellar population phenomenon, but so far all have failed to reproduce the whole range of key observations. Complementary to high-resolution spectroscopy, which has first revealed and characterized chemically the presence of multiple populations in Galactic globular clusters, photometry has been instrumental in investigating this phenomenon in much larger samples of stars—adding a number of crucial observational constraints and correlations with global cluster properties—and in the discovery and characterization of multiple populations also in Magellanic Clouds’ intermediate-age clusters. The purpose of this review is to present the theoretical underpinning and application of the photometric techniques devised to identify and study multiple populations in resolved star clusters. These methods have played and continue to play a crucial role in advancing our knowledge of the cluster multiple population phenomenon, and promise to extend the scope of these investigations to resolved clusters even beyond the Local Group, with the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.
We present an updated release of the BaSTI (a Bag of Stellar Tracks and Isochrones) stellar model and isochrone library for a solar-scaled heavy element distribution. The main input physics that have ...been changed from the previous BaSTI release include the solar metal mixture, electron conduction opacities, a few nuclear reaction rates, bolometric corrections, and the treatment of the overshooting efficiency for shrinking convective cores. The new model calculations cover a mass range between 0.1 and 15 M , 22 initial chemical compositions between Fe/H = −3.20 and +0.45, with helium to metal enrichment ratio dY/dZ = 1.31. The isochrones cover an age range between 20 Myr and 14.5 Gyr, consistently take into account the pre-main-sequence phase, and have been translated to a large number of popular photometric systems. Asteroseismic properties of the theoretical models have also been calculated. We compare our isochrones with results from independent databases and with several sets of observations to test the accuracy of the calculations. All stellar evolution tracks, asteroseismic properties, and isochrones are made available through a dedicated web site.
The seismic data obtained by the CoRoT and Kepler space missions have provided inferences of the global and structural properties of thousands of red giants. When compared with stellar model ...predictions, these inferences can significantly improve our understanding of stellar evolution. We present a brief review of the structure and evolution of red giant stars, devoting some emphasis on the major, still open problems.
We present a large and updated stellar evolution database for low-, intermediate-, and high-mass stars in a wide metallicity range, suitable for studying Galactic and extragalactic simple and ...composite stellar populations using population synthesis techniques. The stellar mass range is between approx0.5 and 10 M sub(o) with a fine mass spacing. The metallicity Fe/H comprises 10 values ranging from-2.27 to 0.40, with a scaled solar metal distribution. The initial He mass fraction ranges from Y = 0.245, for the more metal-poor composition, up to 0.303 for the more metal-rich one, with deltaY/deltaZ approx 1.4. For each adopted chemical composition, the evolutionary models have been computed without (canonical models) and with overshooting from the Schwarzschild boundary of the convective cores during the central H-burning phase. Semiconvection is included in the treatment of core convection during the He-burning phase. The whole set of evolutionary models can be used to compute isochrones in a wide age range, from approx30 Myr to approx15 Gyr. Both evolutionary models and isochrones are available in several observational planes, employing an updated set of bolometric corrections and color-T sub(eff) relations computed for this project. The number of points along the models and the resulting isochrones is selected in such a way that interpolation for intermediate metallicities not contained in the grid is straightforward; a simple quadratic interpolation produces results of sufficient accuracy for population synthesis applications.We compare our isochrones with results from a series of widely used stellar evolution databases and perform some empirical tests for the reliability of our models. Since this work is devoted to scaled solar chemical compositions, we focus our attention on the Galactic disk stellar populations, employing multicolor photometry of unevolved field main-sequence stars with precise Hipparcos parallaxes, well-studied open clusters, and one eclipsing binary system with precise measurements of masses, radii, and Fe/H of both components. We find that the predicted metallicity dependence of the location of the lower, unevolved main sequence in the color magnitude diagram (CMD) appears in satisfactory agreement with empirical data. When comparing our models with CMDs of selected, well-studied, open clusters, once again we were able to properly match the whole observed evolutionary sequences by assuming cluster distance and reddening estimates in satisfactory agreement with empirical evaluations of these quantities. In general, models including overshooting during the H-burning phase provide a better match to the observations, at least for ages below approx4 Gyr. At Fe/H around solar and higher ages (i.e. smaller convective cores) before the onset of radiative cores, the selected efficiency of core overshooting may be too high in our model, as well as in various other models in the literature. Since we also provide canonical models, the reader is strongly encouraged to always compare the results from both sets in this critical age range.
Low-mass stars in the He-core-burning (HeCB) phase play a major role in stellar, galactic, and extragalactic astrophysics. The ability to predict accurately the properties of these stars, however, ...depends on our understanding of convection, which remains one of the key open questions in stellar modelling. We argue that the combination of the luminosity of the AGB bump (AGBb) and the period spacing of gravity modes (ΔΠ1) during the HeCB phase provides us with a decisive test to discriminate between competing models of these stars. We use the Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA), a Bag of Stellar Tracks and Isochrones (BaSTI), and PAdova & TRieste Stellar Evolution Code (PARSEC) stellar evolution codes to model a typical giant star observed by Kepler. We explore how various near-core-mixing scenarios affect the predictions of the above-mentioned constraints, and we find that ΔΠ1 depends strongly on the prescription adopted. Moreover we show that the detailed behaviour of ΔΠ1 shows the signature of sharp variations in the Brunt–Väisälä frequency, which could potentially give additional information about near-core features. We find evidence for the AGBb among Kepler targets, and a first comparison with observations shows that, even if standard models are able to reproduce the luminosity distribution, no standard model can account for satisfactorily the period spacing of HeCB stars. Our analysis allows us to outline a candidate model to describe simultaneously the two observed distributions: a model with a moderate overshooting region characterized by an adiabatic thermal stratification. This prescription will be tested in the future on cluster stars, to limit possible observational biases.
We discuss how knowledge of the whole evolutionary history of dwarf galaxies, including details on the early star formation events, can provide insight on the origin of the different dwarf galaxy ...types. We suggest that these types may be imprinted by the early conditions of formation rather than only being the result of a recent morphological transformation driven by environmental effects. We present precise star formation histories of a sample of Local Group dwarf galaxies, derived from color-magnitude diagrams reaching the oldest main-sequence turnoffs. We argue that these galaxies can be assigned to two basic types: fast dwarfs that started their evolution with a dominant and short star formation event and slow dwarfs that formed a small fraction of their stars early and have continued forming stars until the present time (or almost). These two different evolutionary paths do not map directly onto the present-day morphology (dwarf spheroidal versus dwarf irregular). Slow and fast dwarfs also differ in their inferred past location relative to the Milky Way and/or M31, which hints that slow dwarfs were generally assembled in lower-density environments than fast dwarfs. We propose that the distinction between a fast and slow dwarf galaxy primarily reflects the characteristic density of the environment where they form. At a later stage, interaction with a large host galaxy may play a role in the final gas removal and ultimate termination of star formation.
Based on Hubble Space Telescope observations from the Local Cosmology from Isolated Dwarfs project, we present the star formation histories, as a function of galactocentric radius, of four isolated ...Local Group dwarf galaxies: two dSph galaxies, Cetus and Tucana, and two transition galaxies (dTrs), LGS-3 and Phoenix. The oldest stellar populations of the dSphs and dTrs are, within the uncertainties, coeval (~13 Gyr) at all galactocentric radii. We find that there are no significative differences between the four galaxies in the fundamental properties (such as the normalized star formation rate or age-metallicity relation) of their outer regions (radii greater than four exponential scale lengths); at large radii, these galaxies consist exclusively of old (gap10.5 Gyr) metal-poor stars. The duration of star formation in the inner regions varies from galaxy to galaxy, and the extended central star formation in the dTrs produces the dichotomy between dSph and dTr galaxy types. The dTr galaxies show prominent radial stellar population gradients: The centers of these galaxies host young (lap1 Gyr) populations, while the age of the last formation event increases smoothly with increasing radius. This contrasts with the two dSph galaxies. Tucana shows a similar, but milder, gradient, but no gradient in age is detected Cetus. For the three galaxies with significant stellar population gradients, the exponential scale length decreases with time. These results are in agreement with outside-in scenarios of dwarf galaxy evolution, in which a quenching of the star formation toward the center occurs as the galaxy runs out of gas in the outskirts.
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