Bibcode
Córsico, A. H.; Althaus, L. G.; Miller Bertolami, M. M.; González Pérez, J. M.; Kepler, S. O.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 701, Issue 2, pp. 1008-1014 (2009).
Advertised on:
8
2009
Journal
Citations
25
Refereed citations
18
Description
We present a pulsational stability analysis of hot post-asymptotic giant
branch (AGB) H-deficient pre-white dwarf stars with active He-burning
shells. The stellar models employed are state-of-the-art equilibrium
structures representative of PG1159 stars derived from the complete
evolution of the progenitor stars, through the thermally pulsing AGB
phase and born-again episode. On the basis of fully nonadiabatic
pulsation computations, we confirmed theoretical evidence for the
existence of a separate PG1159 instability strip in the log T
eff-log g diagram characterized by short-period g-modes
excited by the epsilon-mechanism. This instability strip partially
overlaps the already known GW Vir instability strip of
intermediate/long-period g-modes destabilized by the classical
κ-mechanism acting on the partial ionization of C and/or O in the
envelope of PG1159 stars. We found that PG1159 stars characterized by
thick He-rich envelopes and located inside this overlapping region could
exhibit both short and intermediate/long periods simultaneously. As a
natural application of our results, we study the particular case of VV
47, a pulsating planetary nebula nucleus (PG1159 type) that is
particularly interesting because it has been reported to exhibit a rich
and complex pulsation spectrum including a series of unusually short
pulsation periods. We found that the long periods exhibited by VV 47 can
be readily explained by the classical κ-mechanism, while the
observed short-period branch below ≈300 s could correspond to modes
triggered by the He-burning shell through the epsilon-mechanism,
although more observational work is needed to confirm the reality of
these short-period modes. Were the existence of short-period g-modes in
this star convincingly confirmed by future observations, VV 47 could be
the first known pulsating star in which both the κ-mechanism and
the epsilon-mechanism of mode driving are simultaneously operating.
Related projects
Helio and Astero-Seismology and Exoplanets Search
The principal objectives of this project are: 1) to study the structure and dynamics of the solar interior, 2) to extend this study to other stars, 3) to search for extrasolar planets using photometric methods (primarily by transits of their host stars) and their characterization (using radial velocity information) and 4) the study of the planetary
Savita
Mathur