Exploring stellar evolution models of sdB stars using MESA

TL;DR

This study uses MESA to model sdB star evolution, comparing internal structures with asteroseismic data, and finds standard models underestimate convective core sizes unless extreme overshoot parameters are used.

Contribution

It demonstrates that standard stellar evolution models with MESA underestimate sdB convective core sizes, highlighting the need to incorporate boundary layer effects suggested by 3D turbulence simulations.

Findings

Standard MESA models yield smaller convective cores (~0.17-0.18 M_sun) than asteroseismology suggests.

Extreme overshoot parameters can enlarge convective cores but are physically unrealistic.

Accounting for boundary layers from 3D turbulence simulations could reconcile models with observations.

Abstract

Stellar evolution calculations have had great success reproducing the observed atmospheric properties of different classes of stars. Recent detections of g-mode pulsations in evolved He burning stars allow a rare comparison of their internal structure with stellar models. Asteroseismology of subdwarf B stars suggests convective cores of $0.22-0.28\,M_\odot$, $\gtrsim 45\,\%$ of the total stellar mass. Previous studies found significantly smaller convective core masses ($\lesssim 0.19\,M_\odot$) at a comparable evolutionary stage. We evolved stellar models with MESA (Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics) to explore how well the interior structure inferred from asteroseismology can be reproduced by standard algorithms. Our qualitative evolutionary paths, position in the $\log g-T_{\rm{eff}}$ diagram and model timescales are consistent with previous results. SdB masses from our full evolutionary sequences fall within the range of the empirical sdB mass distribution, but are nearly always lower than the median. Using standard MLT with atomic diffusion we find convective core masses of $\sim 0.17-0.18 M_\odot$, averaged over the entire sdB lifetime. We can increase the convective core sizes to be as large as those inferred from asteroseismology, but only for extreme values of the overshoot parameter (overshoot gives numerically unstable and physically unrealistic behavior at the boundary). High resolution three-dimensional (3D) simulations of turbulent convection in stars suggest that the Schwarzschild criterion for convective mixing sytematically {\it underestimates the actual extent of mixing because a boundary layer forms.} Accounting for this would decrease the errors in both sdB total and convective core masses.