White dwarfs

The evolution of a. star after it leaves the red-giant phase depends to some extent on its mass. If it is not more than about 1.4 M it may contract appreciably again and then enter an oscillatory phase of its life before becoming a white dwarf (p. 7). When core contraction following helium and carbon depletion raises the temperature above I0 K the y-ray.s in the stellar assembly become sufficiently energetic to promote the (endothermic) reaction Ne(y,a) 0. The a-paiticle released can penetrate the coulomb barrier of other neon nuclei to form " Mg in a strongly exothermic reaction ... 

This agrees well with the latest white dwarf cooling estimations, which favour a low disk age (< 10Gyr). 

Since most (if not all) low-metallicity objects that are currently observed in the halo are not in the AGB phase, material enriched in carbon and the s-process elements is assumed to have accreted from the companion AGB stars, which have already evolved to faint white dwarfs, to the surface of the surviving companion. This scenario is the same as that applied to classical CH stars [4], Unfortunately, long-term radial velocity monitoring has been obtained for only a limited number of objects a clear binarity signature has been established for six objects in our sample to date. However, there exists additional support for the mass-accretion scenario for the Ba-rich CEMP stars. Fig. lb shows [C/H] as a function of luminosity roughly estimated from the effective temperature... 

The four general types of stars (main sequence, white dwarfs, giants and supergiants) provide a classification based on the fundamental observable properties but also suggest an evolution of stars. Astrochemically, the cooler giants and supergiants have many more atomic and molecular species that are the products of the nuclear fusion processes responsible for powering the stars. The nuclear fusion processes allow for the formation of more of the elements in the Periodic Table, especially the heavier elements that dominate life on Earth - principally carbon. 

Low (<1 solar mass) Middle (5-10 solar masses) High (>20 solar masses) Protostar — pre-main sequence — main sequence — red giant — planetary nebula — white dwarf — black dwarf Protostar - main sequence — red giant — planetary nebula or supernova —> white dwarf or neutron star Protostar — main sequence —> supergiant — supernova — neutron star... 

During the discussion of the HR diagram in Section 4.2 it was noted that 92 per cent of all observed stars fall on the main sequence 7.5 per cent are white dwarf... 

The plot of luminosity versus temperature for all stars, resulting in the main sequence, red giants and white dwarfs. Stellar evolution leads to mass - dependent birth lines onto the main sequence... 

Herzprung-Russell diagram A graphical plot of stellar intensity versus photosphere temperature showing that observed stars fall into classes main sequence, red giants, supergiants and white dwarfs. 

White dwarf The compact remnant of a low-mass star that resists further collapse by the internal degenerate electron gas. 

Middle-sized stars, between about 1 and 8 M , undergo complicated mixing processes and mass loss in advanced stages of evolution, culminating in the ejection of a planetary nebula while the core becomes a white dwarf. Such stars are important sources of fresh carbon, nitrogen and heavy elements formed by the slow neutron capture (s-) process (see Chapter 6). Finally, small stars below 1 M have lifetimes comparable to the age of the Universe and contribute little to chemical enrichment or gas recycling and merely serve to lock up material. 

The result of all these processes is that the Sun was bom 4.6 Gyr ago with mass fractions X 0.70, Y 0.28, Z 0.02. These abundances (with perhaps a slightly lower value of Z) are also characteristic of the local ISM and young stars. The material in the solar neighbourhood is about 15 per cent gas (including dust which is about 1 per cent by mass of the gas) and about 85 per cent stars or compact remnants thereof these are white dwarfs (mainly), neutron stars and black holes. 

Novae and symbiotic stars have shells which are excited by extremely hot stars (several x 105 K) like some PNs, but denser, and display overabundances of elements up to Ne or beyond due to thermonuclear processes affecting matter accreted from a companion by a white dwarf. 

PN nucleus, horizontal-branch and white-dwarf regions. The dotted line shows a schematic main sequence and evolutionary track for Population II, while various dashed lines show roughly the Cepheid instability strip, the transition to surface convection zones and the helium-shell flashing locus for Population I. After Pagel (1977). Copyright by the IAU. Reproduced with kind permission from Kluwer Academic Publishers. 

Degeneracy, white dwarfs and neutron stars 5.4.1 Introduction... 

White dwarfs are formed hot and gradually cool at nearly constant radius. With increasing mass, the star becomes squashed down until it is highly relativistic and very small. 

This is the Chandrasekhar-Landau limiting mass for white dwarfs, whose actual value (derivable from the theory of polytropic stars see Appendix 4) is... 

Figure 5.15 gives an overview of stellar evolution in the HR diagram. Both intermediate- and low-mass stars end their lives as white dwarfs after having expelled a substantial amount of mass in winds and planetary nebulae, the basic reason being the formation of a degenerate CO core that is not massive enough... 

Fig. 5.19. Evolutionary track in the HR diagram of an AGB model of total mass 0.6 Mq, initial composition (Y, Z) = (0.25, 0.001 Z /20). Heavy dots marked 2 to 11 indicate the start of a series of thermal pulses (see Fig. 5.20), which lead to excursions along the steep diagonal lines. Numbers along the horizontal and descending track indicate times in years relative to the moment when an ionized planetary nebula appears and (in parentheses) the mass of the envelope in units of Mq. R = 0.0285 indicates a line of constant radius (R in solar units) corresponding to the white-dwarf sequence. Shaded areas represent earlier evolutionary stages for stars with initial masses 3,5 and 7 Mq and the steep broken line marks the high-temperature boundary of the instability strip in which stars pulsate in their fundamental mode. The y-axis gives log L/Lq. Adapted from Iben and Renzini (1983).

A further effect during evolution up the AGB is mass loss through stellar winds, at an increasing rate as the star increases in luminosity and radius and becomes unstable to pulsations which drive a super-wind in the case of intermediate-mass stars. For stars with an initial mass below some limit, which may be of order 6 M , the wind evaporates the hydrogen-rich envelope before the CO core has reached the Chandrasekhar limiting mass (see Section 5.4.3), the increase in luminosity ceases and the star contracts at constant luminosity, eventually becoming a white dwarf (Figs. 5.15, 5.19). A computed relation between initial stellar mass and the final white-dwarf mass is shown in Fig. 5.21. 

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