You Spin me Right Round: Stellar Rotation with Asteroseismology

Title: Core-Envelope Coupling in Intermediate-Mass Core-Helium Burning Stars

Authors: Jamie Tayar, Paul G. Beck, Marc H. Pinsonneault , Rafael A. García, and Savita Mathur

First Author’s Institution: Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii

Status: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal [open access on arXiv]

Disclaimer: The author of this astrobite currently works with the first author of today’s paper, but was not involved in the presented work. 

All stars in nature rotate, including our own. However, stellar rotation over a star’s lifetime remains poorly understood. This has a profound impact on the accuracy stellar models, which are our primary source for understanding the interiors and evolution of stars. 

Today’s paper focuses on internal rotation mechanisms; specifically, how a star’s core rotates with respect to its surface. Understanding stellar core rotation can teach us a ton about internal stellar physics and long-term angular momentum transport within a star’s interior.

A Problem of (Astero)Seismic Proportions

Like many outstanding problems in astronomy, this problem can be solved by obtaining more data. How do we get more data on the internal core rotation rates of stars? Through asteroseismology! By studying stellar pulsations, we can infer information about a star’s interior.

The authors of this paper focused on evolved intermediate-mass stars, or stars between two and eight times the mass of the Sun. These stars fall in the transition region between low and high-mass stars, as their name implies. Like their more massive counterparts, these stars have a convective core and rotate rapidly during the main sequence – the phase of evolution where stars burn hydrogen into helium. However, like low mass stars, intermediate mass stars become cool red giants as they evolve. It turns out red giant stars also pulsate like the Sun, a low mass star. By comparing how red giant stars oscillate to how the Sun oscillates, we can measure stellar parameters for red giants, such as their mass and radius.

The Core Tells All

We can additionally infer core rotation periods for red giant stars using asteroseismology, making them the perfect candidates for this study. In red giant stars, waves that propagate near the stellar core interfere with waves that propagate on the surface. By measuring surface pulsations, we can determine how the core and surface waves interact. From there, we can infer details about the stellar core, such as rotation.

After measuring the core rotation periods for the stars in this sample via asteroseismology using data from the Kepler Space Telescope, the authors compared their rotation periods with several other stellar parameters and analyzed how stars with these measured core rotation periods should evolve over time. Figure 1 shows a comparison between measured core rotation periods and surface gravity, which decreases as stars of the same mass evolve. This trend with surface gravity indicates that as these stars evolve, their cores rotate more slowly. The authors also compared their measured core rotation periods with stellar mass and metallicity but found no obvious trends.

Figure 1: Stellar cores spin more slowly as intermediate-mass stars evolve, as shown by this comparison between core rotation period and surface gravity. Figure 6 in the paper.

Several of the stars in the sample also had surface rotation periods measured by a previous study. This comparison is shown in the left panel of Figure 2. Although this comparison shows that as stars decrease in surface gravity (evolve), the ratio between their core rotation period and surface rotation period gets closer to 1 (i.e. the surface and core rotation periods become more similar as a star evolves). This suggests that the stellar core can become recoupled with the surface as time goes on. The authors, however, exercise caution with such a result. When they predict surface rotation periods with stellar models, that obvious trend disappears (right panel of Figure 2) which shows that there may be a bias when selecting stars with measured surface rotation periods.

Figure 2: Surface rotation periods measured from starspot modulation show a trend when compared to core rotation periods and surface gravity (left) while surface rotation determined by models does not (right). Figure 11 in the paper.

Evolving Stellar Astronomy

The results of this study have several impacts for future studies of stellar evolution. The evolution of core rotation periods over time suggests angular momentum transport between the core of the star and the surrounding envelope. The comparison with surface rotation periods also shows some evidence for core-surface recoupling as these stars evolve. This study provides insight into internal stellar rotation that can be used to improve current stellar models and provides a new jumping off point for future work.

Featured Image: Figure 6 in the paper.

About Ellis Avallone

I am a graduate student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa Institute for Astronomy, where I study the Sun and Low-mass stars. My current research focuses on how we can use detailed models of solar eruptions to understand eruptions on other low-mass stars. In my free time I enjoy rock climbing, painting, and eating copious amounts of mac and cheese.

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