Abstract
Convection is ubiquitous in stars and occurs under many different conditions. Here we explore convection in main-sequence stars through two lenses: dimensionless parameters arising from stellar structure and parameters that emerge from the application of mixing length theory. We first define each quantity in terms familiar to both the 1D stellar evolution community and the hydrodynamics community. We then explore the variation of these quantities across different convection zones, different masses, and different stages of main-sequence evolution. We find immense diversity across stellar convection zones. Convection occurs in thin shells, deep envelopes, and nearly spherical cores; it can be efficient or inefficient, rotationally constrained or not, transsonic or deeply subsonic. This atlas serves as a guide for future theoretical and observational investigations by indicating which regimes of convection are active in a given star, and by describing appropriate model assumptions for numerical simulations.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 19 |
| Journal | Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series |
| Volume | 262 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 1 2022 |
Funding
The Flatiron Institute is supported by the Simons Foundation. This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant No. PHY-1748958. We are grateful to the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and its staff for providing the uniquely engaging environment that enabled this work. E.H.A. thanks Ben Brown and Imogen Cresswell for many discussions on stellar convection broadly and magnetoconvection. E.H.A. thanks CIERA and Northwestern University for CIERA Postdoctoral fellowship funding. D.L. is supported in part by NASA HTMS grant 80NSSC20K1280. The Flatiron Institute is supported by the Simons Foundation. This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant No. PHY-1748958. We are grateful to the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and its staff for providing the uniquely engaging environment that enabled this work. E.H.A. thanks Ben Brown and Imogen Cresswell for many discussions on stellar convection broadly and magnetoconvection. E.H.A. thanks CIERA and Northwestern University for CIERA Postdoctoral fellowship funding. D.L. is supported in part by NASA HTMS grant 80NSSC20K1280.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Space and Planetary Science