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Why Galaxies care about Asymptotic Giant Branch stars. S. Cristallo (INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Teramo). Collaborators : O. Straniero, R. Gallino, L. Piersanti, I. Dominguez, M.T. Lederer. OUTLINE. The importance of AGB stars
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Why Galaxies care about Asymptotic Giant Branch stars S. Cristallo (INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Teramo) Collaborators: O. Straniero, R. Gallino,L. Piersanti, I. Dominguez, M.T. Lederer
OUTLINE • The importance of AGB stars • Major improvements on the stellar code (FRANEC) • AGB nucleosynthesis and evolution at different metallicities • Very low metallicityAGBs : chemical features
Why AGBs are so important… • Excellent tracings of halo structures; • IR emission (effects on integrated colors); • tracers of intermediate age populations (IZw18); • distance indicators (Mira); • production sites of LIGHT & HEAVY elements.
CORE Earth-Sun (~200 RSUN) AGB structure (1) MAIN REFERENCES: Chieffi et al. (1998) Straniero et al. (2005) Cristallo (2006), PhD Thesis(*) Cristallo et al. (2007) (*) available at http://www.oa-teramo.inaf.it/osservatorio/personale/cristallo/pag_in_eng.html
13C(α,n)16O 22Ne(α,n)25Mg AGBstructure (2)
The resulting 13C pockets X(13Ceff)=X(13C)-X(14N)*13/14 1st ΔM~10-3M 11th 14N strong neutron poison via 14N(n,p)14C reaction
THE NETWORK About 500 isotopes linked by more than 700 reactions LEGENDA: Light elements Heavy elements
Radiative burning of 13C(α,n)16Oreaction FRANEC C/O~50 C/O~8 M=2M Z=1.0x10-4 M=2M C/O~2 Z=Z (Z=1.4x10-2) C/O>1 FRANEC
Molecular opacities O-rich regime C-rich regime CO H2O TiO CN C2 C3 … … Grains Molecular opacities Atomic opacities T 2000 K 4000-5000 K (*) Cristallo et al. in preparation (+) Cristallo et al. 2007 (ApJ 667, 489)
The s-process: RESUME Z=1.4x10-2 Z= 3.0x10-3 Z=1.0x10-4 Final distributions
AGB evolution at very low metallicities M=2MSUN Z=10-4 M=1.5MSUN Z=5x10-5 Cristallo et al. 2007 (ApJ 667, 489)
The proton ingestion mechanism • Low time steps Time dependent mixing • Rapid structure reaction Coupling between phisical and chemical evolution • Large neutron densities (nn~1015 cm-3) 700 isotopes & 1000 reactions Work in progress!! Z= 5.0 x 10-5 M= 0.85 M M= 1.0 M M= 1.5 M M= 2.0 M M= 2.5 M Hollowell et al. (1990) Iwamoto et al. (2004) Suda et al. (2004) Straniero et al. (2005) Campbell et al. (2007)
Effects of the Huge Pulse 12C/13C Nitrogen
Litium Heavy elements
The importance of using a FULL nuclear network FULL REDUCED
THE STATE OF THE ART • First AGB models calculated with C-enhanced low temperature opacity coefficients, with the formation of a non-negligible 13C-pocket and calculated with a complete nuclear network; • AGB models at very low metallicity: an alternative scenario to the 13C-pocket spread requested by observations?