Thermohaline Mixing and its Role in the Evolution of Carbon and Nitrogen Abundances in Globular Cluster Red Giants: The Test Case of Messier 3

TL;DR

This paper investigates thermohaline mixing in red giant stars within globular clusters, using M3 as a case study to understand how it influences carbon and nitrogen surface abundances during stellar evolution.

Contribution

It constrains the thermohaline diffusion coefficient using observational data from M3, demonstrating its role in explaining abundance variations in RGB stars.

Findings

Thermohaline mixing explains the full spread of [C/Fe] in M3.

It causes significant [N/Fe] changes in CN-weak stars.

It has limited impact on nitrogen in CN-strong stars.

Abstract

We review the observational evidence for extra mixing in stars on the red giant branch (RGB) and discuss why thermohaline mixing is a strong candidate mechanism. We recall the simple phenomenological description of thermohaline mixing, and aspects of mixing in stars in general. We use observations of M3 to constrain the form of the thermohaline diffusion coefficient and any associated free parameters. This is done by matching [C/Fe] and [N/Fe] along the RGB of M3. After taking into account a presumed initial primordial bimodality of [C/Fe] in the CN-weak and CN-strong stars our thermohaline mixing models can explain the full spread of [C/Fe]. Thermohaline mixing can produce a significant change in [N/Fe] as a function of absolute magnitude on the RGB for initially CN-weak stars, but not for initially CN-strong stars, which have so much nitrogen to begin with that any extra mixing does not significantly affect the surface nitrogen composition.