Impact of the uncertainties of $3 \alpha$ and $^{12}{\rm C}(\alpha,\gamma)^{16}{\rm O}$ reactions on the He-burning phases of low- and intermediate-mass stars

TL;DR

This study assesses how uncertainties in key nuclear reaction rates affect the evolution and chemical composition of low- and intermediate-mass stars during helium-burning phases, finding minimal impact on lifetimes but notable effects on internal abundances.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the effects of reaction rate uncertainties on stellar evolution models, highlighting the relative importance of these nuclear physics uncertainties.

Findings

$^{12}{ m C}( ext{α}, ext{γ})^{16}{ m O}$ rate variations cause up to 15% change in C/O abundances.

Uncertainties in reaction rates have less than 4% impact on He-burning lifetime.

Most stellar features are affected by less than 2% by reaction rate uncertainties.

Abstract

We estimate the impact on the stellar evolution of the uncertainties in the $3\alpha$ and the $^{12}{\rm C}(\alpha,\gamma)^{16}{\rm O}$ reaction rates [...]. We calculated models of low- and intermediate-mass stars for different values of the rates. The $3\alpha$ reaction rate was varied up to $\pm 24\%$, while the $^{12}{\rm C}(\alpha,\gamma)^{16}{\rm O}$ reaction rate was varied by up to $\pm 35\%$. The models were calculated for two different initial chemical compositions to represent different stellar populations. A $M = 0.67$ $M_{\odot}$ model was chosen as representative of the halo ancient stars, while for disk stars, the $M=1.5$ $M_{\odot}$ and $M=2.5$ $M_{\odot}$ models were considered. The impact of the two reaction rates on the central He-burning lifetime and the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) lifetime, as well as the mass of the C/O core at the central He exhaustion and the internal C and O abundances, was investigated. A variation of the $^{12}{\rm C}(\alpha,\gamma)^{16}{\rm O}$ reaction rates resulted in marginal differences in the analysed features among the three considered stellar masses, except for the C/O abundances. The central He-burning lifetime changed by less than 4%, while the AGB lifetime was affected only at the 1% level. The internal C and O abundances showed greater variation, with a change of about 15%. The uncertainty in the $3\alpha$ reaction rate mainly influences the C and O central abundances (up to 10%) for all the models considered, and the AGB lifetime for intermediate mass stars (up to 5%). Most of the investigated features were affected by less than 2%. The current uncertainty in the two reaction rates has a negligible effect on the predicted evolutionary time scale with respect to other uncertainty sources. The variability in the chemical profile at the end of the shell He-burning phase is still relevant.