Slowing the spins of stellar cores Fuller, Jim; Piro, Anthony L; Jermyn, Adam S
Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,
05/2019, Volume:
485, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
ABSTRACT
The angular momentum (AM) evolution of stellar interiors, along with the resulting rotation rates of stellar remnants, remains poorly understood. Asteroseismic measurements of red giant ...stars reveal that their cores rotate much faster than their surfaces, but much slower than theoretically predicted, indicating an unidentified source of AM transport operates in their radiative cores. Motivated by this, we investigate the magnetic Tayler instability and argue that it saturates when turbulent dissipation of the perturbed magnetic field energy is equal to magnetic energy generation via winding. This leads to larger magnetic field amplitudes, more efficient AM transport, and smaller shears than predicted by the classic Tayler–Spruit dynamo. We provide prescriptions for the effective AM diffusivity and incorporate them into numerical stellar models, finding they largely reproduce (1) the nearly rigid rotation of the Sun and main sequence stars, (2) the core rotation rates of low-mass red giants during hydrogen shell and helium burning, and (3) the rotation rates of white dwarfs. We discuss implications for stellar rotational evolution, internal rotation profiles, rotational mixing, and the spins of compact objects.
Stellar Evolution in AGN Disks Cantiello, Matteo; Jermyn, Adam S.; Lin, Douglas N. C.
Astrophysical journal/The Astrophysical journal,
04/2021, Volume:
910, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Abstract Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are powered by geometrically thin accretion disks surrounding a central supermassive black hole. Here we explore the evolution of stars embedded in these ...extreme astrophysical environments (AGN stars). Because AGN disks are much hotter and denser than most components of the interstellar medium, AGN stars are subject to very different boundary conditions than normal stars. They are also strongly affected by both mass accretion, which can run away given the vast mass of the disk, and mass loss due to super-Eddington winds. Moreover, chemical mixing plays a critical role in the evolution of these stars by allowing fresh hydrogen accreted from the disk to mix into their cores. We find that, depending on the local AGN density and sound speed and the duration of the AGN phase, AGN stars can rapidly become very massive ( M > 100 M ⊙ ). These stars undergo core collapse, leave behind compact remnants, and contribute to polluting the disk with heavy elements. We show that the evolution of AGN stars can have a profound impact on the evolution of AGN metallicities, as well as the production of gravitational wave sources observed by LIGO-Virgo. We point to our Galactic Center as a region well suited to testing some of our predictions for this exotic stellar evolutionary channel.
In early-type stars a fossil magnetic field may be generated during the star formation process or be the result of a stellar merger event. Surface magnetic fields are thought to be erased by ...(sub)surface convection layers, which typically leave behind weak disordered fields. However, if the fossil field is strong enough it can prevent the onset of (sub)surface convection and so be preserved onto the main sequence. We calculate the critical field strength at which this occurs, and find that it corresponds well with the lower limit amplitude of observed fields in strongly magnetized Ap/Bp stars ( 300 G). The critical field strength is predicted to increase slightly during the main-sequence evolution, which could also explain the observed decline in the fraction of magnetic stars. This supports the conclusion that the bimodal distribution of observed magnetic fields in early-type stars reflects two different field origin stories: strongly magnetic fields are fossils fields inherited from star formation or a merger event, and weak fields are the product of ongoing dynamo action.
Abstract
Stars can either be formed in or captured by the accretion disks in active galactic nuclei (AGNs). These AGN stars are irradiated and subject to extreme levels of accretion, which can turn ...even low-mass stars into very massive ones (
M
> 100
M
⊙
) whose evolution may result in the formation of massive compact objects (
M
> 10
M
⊙
). Here we explore the spins of these AGN stars and the remnants they leave behind. We find that AGN stars rapidly spin up via accretion, eventually reaching near-critical rotation rates. They further maintain near-critical rotation even as they shed their envelopes, become compact, and undergo late stages of burning. This makes them good candidates to produce high-spin massive black holes, such as the ones seen by LIGO-Virgo in GW 190521g, as well as long gamma-ray bursts and the associated chemical pollution of the AGN disk.
A common situation in galactic and intergalactic gas involves cold dense gas in motion relative to hot diffuse gas. Kelvin-Helmholtz instability creates a turbulent mixing layer and populates the ...intermediate-temperature phase, which often cools rapidly. The energy lost to cooling is balanced by the advection of hot high enthalpy gas into the mixing layer, resulting in growth and acceleration of the cold phase. This process may play a major role in determining the interstellar medium and circumgalactic medium phase structure, and accelerating cold gas in galactic winds and cosmic filaments. Cooling in these mixing layers occurs in a thin corrugated sheet, which we argue has an area with fractal dimension D = 5/2 and a thickness that adjusts to match the hot phase mixing time to the cooling time. These cooling sheet properties form the basis of a new model for how the cooling rate and hot gas inflow velocity depend on the size L, cooling time of the mixed phase , relative velocity , and density contrast of the system. Entrainment is expected to be enhanced in environments with short , large , and large . Using a large suite of three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations, we demonstrate that this fractal cooling layer model accurately captures the energetics and evolution of turbulent interfaces and can therefore be used as a foundation for understanding multiphase mixing with strong radiative cooling.
Abstract
Disks of gas accreting onto supermassive black holes are thought to power active galactic nuclei (AGN). Stars may form in gravitationally unstable regions of these disks, or may be captured ...from nuclear star clusters. Because of the dense gas environment, the evolution of these embedded stars can diverge dramatically from those in the interstellar medium. This work extends previous studies of stellar evolution in AGN disks by exploring a variety of ways in which accretion onto stars in AGN disks may differ from Bondi accretion. We find that tidal effects from the supermassive black hole significantly alter the evolution of stars in AGN disks, and that our results do not depend critically on assumptions about radiative feedback on the accretion stream. Thus, in addition to depending on the ambient density and sound speed, the fate of stars in AGN disks depends sensitively on the distance to and mass of the supermassive black hole. This affects the location in the disk in which stellar explosions occur, where compact remnants form and potentially merge to produce gravitational waves, and where different types of chemical enrichment take place.
We update the capabilities of the open-knowledge software instrument Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA). RSP is a new functionality in MESAstar that models the nonlinear radial ...stellar pulsations that characterize RR Lyrae, Cepheids, and other classes of variable stars. We significantly enhance numerical energy conservation capabilities, including during mass changes. For example, this enables calculations through the He flash that conserve energy to better than 0.001%. To improve the modeling of rotating stars in MESA, we introduce a new approach to modifying the pressure and temperature equations of stellar structure, as well as a formulation of the projection effects of gravity darkening. A new scheme for tracking convective boundaries yields reliable values of the convective core mass and allows the natural emergence of adiabatic semiconvection regions during both core hydrogen- and helium-burning phases. We quantify the parallel performance of MESA on current-generation multicore architectures and demonstrate improvements in the computational efficiency of radiative levitation. We report updates to the equation of state and nuclear reaction physics modules. We briefly discuss the current treatment of fallback in core-collapse supernova models and the thermodynamic evolution of supernova explosions. We close by discussing the new MESA Testhub software infrastructure to enhance source code development.
Rotational invariance strongly constrains the viscosity tensor of classical fluids. When this symmetry is broken in anisotropic materials a wide array of novel phenomena become possible. We explore ...electron fluid behaviors arising from the most general viscosity tensors in two and three dimensions, constrained only thermodynamics and crystal symmetries. We find nontrivial behaviors in both two- and three-dimensional materials, including imprints of the crystal symmetry on the large-scale flow pattern. Breaking time-reversal symmetry introduces a non-dissipative Hall component to the viscosity tensor, and while this vanishes for 3D isotropic systems we show it need not for anisotropic materials. Further, for such systems we find that the electronic fluid stress can couple to the vorticity without breaking time-reversal symmetry. Our work demonstrates the anomalous landscape for electron hydrodynamics in systems beyond graphene, and presents experimental geometries to quantify the effects of electronic viscosity.
Nanoscale localization of electromagnetic fields near metallic nanostructures underpins the fundamentals and applications of plasmonics. The unavoidable energy loss from plasmon decay, initially seen ...as a detriment, has now expanded the scope of plasmonic applications to exploit the generated hot carriers. However, quantitative understanding of the spatial localization of these hot carriers, akin to electromagnetic near-field maps, has been elusive. Here we spatially map hot-electron-driven reduction chemistry with 15 nm resolution as a function of time and electromagnetic field polarization for different plasmonic nanostructures. We combine experiments employing a six-electron photo-recycling process that modify the terminal group of a self-assembled monolayer on plasmonic silver nanoantennas, with theoretical predictions from first-principles calculations of non-equilibrium hot-carrier transport in these systems. The resulting localization of reactive regions, determined by hot-carrier transport from high-field regions, paves the way for improving efficiency in hot-carrier extraction science and nanoscale regio-selective surface chemistry.
Decay of surface plasmons to hot carriers finds a wide variety of applications in energy conversion, photocatalysis and photodetection. However, a detailed theoretical description of plasmonic ...hot-carrier generation in real materials has remained incomplete. Here we report predictions for the prompt distributions of excited 'hot' electrons and holes generated by plasmon decay, before inelastic relaxation, using a quantized plasmon model with detailed electronic structure. We find that carrier energy distributions are sensitive to the electronic band structure of the metal: gold and copper produce holes hotter than electrons by 1-2 eV, while silver and aluminium distribute energies more equitably between electrons and holes. Momentum-direction distributions for hot carriers are anisotropic, dominated by the plasmon polarization for aluminium and by the crystal orientation for noble metals. We show that in thin metallic films intraband transitions can alter the carrier distributions, producing hotter electrons in gold, but interband transitions remain dominant.
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