On using the CMD morphology of M67 to test solar abundances

TL;DR

This study investigates whether the morphology of the M67 star cluster's turn-off in the color-magnitude diagram can be used to constrain solar abundances, considering various physical factors influencing stellar evolution models.

Contribution

The paper extends previous work by analyzing the impact of updated solar abundances and physical processes on the M67 turn-off morphology, highlighting the complexity of using it for solar abundance constraints.

Findings

Low CNO solar abundances make reproducing M67's turn-off more difficult.

Overshooting physics can compensate for low CNO abundances in models.

Accurate modeling of multiple factors is essential for using M67 to constrain solar abundances.

Abstract

The open cluster M67 has solar metallicity and an age of about 4Gyr. The turn-off mass is close to the minimum mass for which solar metallicity stars develop a convective core during main sequence evolution as a result of the development of hydrogen burning through the CNO-cycle. The morphology of the color-magnitude-diagram (CMD) of M67 around the turn-off shows a clear hook-like feature, direct sign that stars close to the turn-off have convective cores. VandenBerg et al. investigated the possibility of using the morphology of the M67 turn-off to put constraints on the solar metallicity, particularly CNO elements, for which solar abundances have been revised downwards by more than 30% over the last few years. Here, we extend their work filling in the gaps in their analysis. To this aim, we compute isochrones appropriate for M67 using new (low metallicity) and old (high metallicity) solar abundances and study whether the characteristic turn-off in the CMD of M67 can be reproduced or not. We also study the importance of other constitutive physics on determining the presence of such a hook, particularly element diffusion, overshooting and nuclear reaction rates. We find that using the new solar abundance determinations, with low CNO abundances, makes it more difficult to reproduce the characteristic CMD of M67. This result is in agreement with results by VandenBerg et al. However, changes in the constitutive physics of the models, particularly overshooting, can influence and alter this result to the extent that isochrones constructed with models using low CNO solar abundances can also reproduce the turn-off morphology in M67. We conclude that only if all factors affecting the turn-off morphology are completely under control (and this is not the case), M67 could be used to put constraints on solar abundances.