MESA ISOCHRONES AND STELLAR TRACKS (MIST) 0: METHODS FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF STELLAR ISOCHRONES

By Aaron Dotter. 2016

1,331 citations recorded by the source corpus.

I describe a method to transform a set of stellar evolution tracks onto a uniform basis and then interpolate within that basis to construct stellar isochrones. This method accommodates a broad range of stellar types, from substellar objects to high-mass stars, and phases of evolution, from the pre-main sequence to the white dwarf cooling sequence. I discuss situations in which stellar physics leads to departures from the otherwise monotonic relation between initial stellar mass and lifetime, and how these may be dealt with in isochrone construction. I close with convergence tests and recommendations for the number of points in the uniform basis and the mass between tracks in the original grid required to achieve a certain level accuracy in the resulting isochrones. The programs that implement these methods are free and open-source; they may be obtained from the project webpage.1

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1b5fff161fb31abc923b0e8b12e3d658d38ad3ca

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Jon Fortney
2. B. Bowler
3. N. Madhusudhan
4. D. Huber
5. E. Gaidos
6. C. Conroy
7. M. Marley
8. D. Charbonneau

In Instrumentation

1. C. Conroy
2. Jon Fortney
3. D. Huber
4. P. V. van Dokkum
5. N. Madhusudhan
6. M. Marley
7. E. Gaidos
8. M. Franx

Citations in the corpus

• The Updated BaSTI Stellar Evolution Models and Isochrones. I. Solar-scaled Calculations (2018, background): “All evolutionary tracks presented in this work have been reduced to the same number of points (‘normalized’) to calculate isochrones (see, e.g., Dotter 2016, for a discussion on this issue) and for ease of interpolation, by adopting the same approach extensively discussed in Pietrinferni et al.…”
• Mean proper motions, space orbits, and velocity dispersion profiles of Galactic globular clusters derived fromGaiaDR2 data (2018, methodology): “To guide us in choosing these limits, we calculated MESA isochrones (Dotter 2016; Paxton et al. 2015) for each individual cluster and varied the assumed extinction until we obtained the best match of the MESA isochrone against the position of the cluster members in a G vs.”
• Nebular Continuum and Line Emission in Stellar Population Synthesis Models (2016, methodology): “We include an analysis of the ionizing spectra produced by the MESA Isochrones and Stellar Tracks (MIST; Choi et al. 2016; Dotter 2016), which include stellar rotation.”
• Orbital and atmospheric characterization of the planet within the gap of the PDS 70 transition disk (2018, methodology): “The stellar models adopted to compute the expected observables, given the fit parameters, are from the MIST project (Paxton et al. 2011, 2013, 2015; Dotter 2016; Choi et al. 2016).”
• A Guide to Realistic Uncertainties on the Fundamental Properties of Solar-type Exoplanet Host Stars (2020, methodology): “The kiauhoku package works by resampling evolution tracks to equivalent evolutionary phases (EEPs, Dotter 2016) and then interpolating stellar parameters given initial metallicity, initial mass, and EEP (see Claytor et al. 2020, for more details).”
• Confirmation of the Gaia DR2 Parallax Zero-point Offset Using Asteroseismology and Spectroscopy in the Kepler Field (2018, methodology): “The BC is interpolated from MIST (Choi et al. 2016; Dotter 2016; Paxton et al. 2011, 2013, 2015) BC tables in metallicity, gravity, and temperature.”
• Discovery of a planetary-mass companion within the gap of the transition disk around PDS 70 (2018, methodology): “As an additional approach, we fitted the stellar evolutionary models from the MIST project (Paxton et al. 2011, 2013, 2015; Dotter 2016; Choi et al. 2016) using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach to determine the stellar parameters.”
• The Gaia–Kepler Stellar Properties Catalog. I. Homogeneous Fundamental Properties for 186,301 Kepler Stars (2020, methodology): “2 with rotation, Choi et al. 2016; Dotter 2016; Paxton et al. 2011, 2013, 2015), which we have interpolated from the grids provided on the MIST website.”
• A NEW GENERATION OF PARSEC-COLIBRI STELLAR ISOCHRONES INCLUDING THE TP-AGB PHASE (2017, background): “Their isochrone sequences appear more irregular than ours, owing to their more direct interpolation between TP-AGB tracks (see Dotter 2016).”
• MESA ISOCHRONES AND STELLAR TRACKS (MIST). I. SOLAR-SCALED MODELS (2016, methodology): “This notion of “double EEPs” is discussed in more detail in Paper 0 (Dotter 2016) and will be explored in a future paper.”
• The Gaia–Kepler Stellar Properties Catalog. II. Planet Radius Demographics as a Function of Stellar Mass and Age (2020, methodology): “2 with rotation; Choi et al. 2016; Dotter 2016) purposefully used an upper limit of 20 Gyr to minimize grid edge effects, which can bias the parameter posteriors.”
• Interrelated main-sequence mass–luminosity, mass–radius, and mass–effective temperature relations (2018, background): “…& Maeder 2000; Ekström et al. 2012; Mowlavi et al. 2012; Georgy et al. 2013), Basti Stellar Evolution Database (Pietrinferni et al. 2013), Mesa Isochrones and Stellar Tracks (Paxton et al. 2011, 2013, 2015; Dotter 2016; Choi et al. 2016), others such as Pols et al. (1998), Yıldız (2015), and more.”
• Rapid Reionization by the Oligarchs: The Case for Massive, UV-bright, Star-forming Galaxies with High Escape Fractions (2019, methodology): “…spectral energy distributions (SEDs) are computed using the Flexible Stellar Population Synthesis code (FSPS, Conroy et al. 2009, 2010; Foreman-Mackey et al. 2014) and the MESA Isochrones and Stellar Tracks, which incorporate the effects of rotation (MIST, Choi et al. 2016, 2017; Dotter 2016).”
• The Gemini Planet Imager Exoplanet Survey: Giant Planet and Brown Dwarf Demographics from 10 to 100 au (2019, methodology): “These models were generated using the same parameters used to create the MESA Isochrones and Stellar Tracks (MIST) model grid (Dotter 2016; Choi et al. 2016), and our models are consistent with their grid at the rotation rates they computed.”
• The CARMENES search for exoplanets around M dwarfs (2020, methodology): “Both used exofastv2 (Eastman et al. 2019), which fits planetary and stellar parameters simultaneously using MIST isochrones (Dotter 2016; Choi et al. 2016), the spectral energy distribution (Fig.”
• The White Dwarf Initial–Final Mass Relation for Progenitor Stars from 0.85 to 7.5 M⊙ (2018, methodology): “5) In addition to the semiempirical IFMR adopting PARSEC isochrones, we derive an IFMR based on stellar models and isochrones from the MIST isochrones (Dotter 2016, Choi et al. 2016), which are based on the Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA; Paxton et al. 2011, 2013, 2015).”
• Weighing Black Holes Using Tidal Disruption Events (2018, methodology): “We calculated radius values as a function of mass, metallicity, and age for main-sequence stars using MIST (Paxton et al. 2011, 2013, 2015; Choi et al. 2016; Dotter 2016) and used the maximum and minimum radius values at each stellar mass to bound our radius anomaly parameter.”
• An Older, More Quiescent Universe from Panchromatic SED Fitting of the 3D-HST Survey (2018, methodology): “The physical model uses the MIST stellar evolutionary tracks and isochrones (Choi et al. 2016; Dotter 2016) based on MESA, an open-source stellar evolution package (Paxton et al. 2011, 2013, 2015).”
• Asteroseismology and Gaia: Testing Scaling Relations Using 2200 Kepler Stars with TGAS Parallaxes (2017, background): “Interpolation was performed along equal evolutionary points in age and metallicity (Dotter 2016).”