Seismic diagnostics for transport of angular momentum in stars 1. Rotational splittings from the PMS to the RGB

TL;DR

This study investigates how internal angular momentum transport affects stellar rotation profiles from pre-main sequence to red giant phase, using seismic data and modified stellar models, revealing discrepancies with current theories.

Contribution

It introduces a modified evolutionary code incorporating rotational transport and analyzes seismic data to challenge existing models of stellar angular momentum transport.

Findings

Transport by meridional circulation and shear turbulence overestimates core rotation.

Increasing horizontal turbulent viscosity reduces core rotation to match observations.

Current models may underestimate horizontal turbulent viscosity or lack additional braking mechanisms.

Abstract

Rotational splittings are currently measured for several main sequence stars and a large number of red giants with the space mission Kepler. This will provide stringent constraints on rotation profiles. Our aim is to obtain seismic constraints on the internal transport and surface loss of angular momentum of oscillating solar-like stars. To this end, we study the evolution of rotational splittings from the pre-main sequence to the red-giant branch for stochastically excited oscillation modes. We modified the evolutionary code CESAM2K to take rotationally induced transport in radiative zones into account. Linear rotational splittings were computed for a sequence of $1.3 M_{\odot}$ models. Rotation profiles were derived from our evolutionary models and eigenfunctions from linear adiabatic oscillation calculations. We find that transport by meridional circulation and shear turbulence yields far too high a core rotation rate for red-giant models compared with recent seismic observations. We discuss several uncertainties in the physical description of stars that could have an impact on the rotation profiles. For instance, we find that the Goldreich-Schubert-Fricke instability does not extract enough angular momentum from the core to account for the discrepancy. In contrast, an increase of the horizontal turbulent viscosity by 2 orders of magnitude is able to significantly decrease the central rotation rate on the red-giant branch. Our results indicate that it is possible that the prescription for the horizontal turbulent viscosity largely underestimates its actual value or else a mechanism not included in current stellar models of low mass stars is needed to slow down the rotation in the radiative core of red-giant stars.