Theoretical Uncertainties in Red Giant Branch Evolution: The Red Giant Branch Bump

Details Theoretical Uncertainties in Red Giant Branch Evolution: The Red Giant Branch Bump Theoretical Uncertainties in Red Giant Branch Evolution: The Red Giant Branch Bump

Dec 2003

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003aas...203.8501c&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society Meeting 203, #85.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 35, p.1342

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

A Monte Carlo simulation exploring uncertainties in stellar evolution theory on the red giant branch of metal-poor globular clusters has been conducted. Confidence limits are derived on the absolute V-band magnitude of the bump in the red giant branch luminosity function {MV,bump} , and the excess number of stars in the bump, {Rbump}. The analysis takes into account uncertainties in the primordial helium abundance, abundance of alpha-capture elements, radiative and conductive opacities, nuclear reaction rates, neutrino energy losses, the treatments of diffusion and convection, the surface boundary conditions, and color transformations.
The uncertainty in theoretical values for the red giant bump magnitude varies with metallicity between +0.13/-0.12 mag at [Fe/H] = -2.4 and +0.23/-0.21 mag at [Fe/H] = -1.0. The dominant sources of uncertainty are the abundance of the alpha-capture elements , the mixing length, and the low-temperature opacities. The theoretical values of {MV,bump} are in good agreement with observations. The uncertainty in the theoretical value of {Rbump}\ is ± 0.01 at all metallicities studied. The dominant sources of uncertainty are the abundance of the alpha-capture elements, the mixing length, and the high-temperature opacities. The median value of {Rbump} varies from 0.44 at [Fe/H] = -2.4 to 0.50 at [Fe/H] = -1.0. These theoretical values for {Rbump} are compared to recent observations.
Research supported in part by a NSF CAREER grant 0094231 to BC. BC is a Cottrell Scholar of the Research Corporation.

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