Helioseismology and Solar Abundances

By S. Basu, H. M. Antia. 2007

318 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Helioseismology has allowed us to study the structure of the Sun in unprecedented detail. One of the triumphs of the theory of stellar evolution was that helioseismic studies had shown that the structure of solar models is very similar to that of the Sun. However, this agreement has been spoiled by recent revisions of the solar heavy-element abundances. Heavy-element abundances determine the opacity of the stellar material and hence, are an important input to stellar model calculations. The models with the new, low abundances do not satisfy helioseismic constraints. We review here how heavy-element abundances affect solar models, how these models are tested with helioseismology, and the impact of the new abundances on standard solar models. We also discuss the attempts made to improve the agreement of the low-abundance models with the Sun and discuss how helioseismology is being used to determine the solar heavy-element abundances. A review of current literature shows that attempts to improve agreement between solar models with low heavy-element abundances and seismic inference have been unsuccessful so far. The low-metallicity models that have the least disagreement with seismic data require changing all input physics to stellar models beyond their acceptable ranges. Seismic determinations of the solar heavy-element abundances yield results that are consistent with the older, higher values of the solar abundance, and hence, no major changes to the inputs to solar models are required to make higher-metallicity solar models consistent with the helioseismic data.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8c9f1ff0630bf4e8c46aa20b12e5ce725987110e

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. C. Conroy
2. Aaron Dotter
3. E. Gaidos
4. D. Huber
5. A. Serenelli
6. D. Stello
7. A. Mann
8. Martin Asplund

Citations in the corpus

• Asteroseismology of Solar-Type and Red-Giant Stars (2013, background): “Moreover, some uncertainty remains over the solar photospheric composition (Basu & Antia 2008, Asplund et al. 2009), which impacts on the determination of absolute abundances in other stars.”
• A New Generation of Standard Solar Models (2016, background): “All proposed modifications to physical processes in SSMs offer, at best, only partial improvements in some helioseismic probes (e.g. Guzik et al. 2005; Castro et al. 2007; Basu & Antia 2008; Guzik & Mussack 2010; Serenelli et al. 2011).”
• Ages and fundamental properties of Kepler exoplanet host stars from asteroseismology (2015, result): “…the solar atmosphere are much more realistic than the simple 1D atmospheres used by Grevesse & Sauval (1998), their results are not in agreement with the helioseismic determinations of the solar internal structure (e.g., Basu & Antia 2008; Christensen-Dalsgaard et al. 2009; Serenelli et al. 2009).”
• HOW TO CONSTRAIN YOUR M DWARF: MEASURING EFFECTIVE TEMPERATURE, BOLOMETRIC LUMINOSITY, MASS, AND RADIUS (2015, background): “…solar models, yield disagreements with the sound speed profile in the solar convective envelope, the lower boundary of solar convection zone inferred from helioseismic inversions, and the solar surface helium abundance (e.g., Bahcall et al. 2005; Delahaye & Pinsonneault 2006; Basu & Antia 2008).”
• A Cosmic Abundance Standard: Chemical Homogeneity of the Solar Neighborhood and the ISM Dust-Phase Composition (2008, background): “This opens up new perspectives in the ongoing discussion on helioseismic constraints, chemical abundances and the solar interior model as reviewed by Basu & Antia (2008).”
• Neutrino oscillations (2013, unknown): “However, the internal structure of SSMs calibrated against the newly determined solar surface metallicity does not reproduce the helioseismic constraints; see, for example, [64].”
• Present-day cosmic abundances - A comprehensive study of nearby early B-type stars and implications for stellar and Galactic evolution and interstellar dust models (2012, background): “…stars of∼8-18M⊙, which can provide simultaneously tempo- 1 The contemporarily most prominent example may be the so-called solar composition problem (Basu & Antia 2008), the mismatchof solar interior models based on modern (lower) solar abundances with helioseismic observations, whereas…”
• Seismic diagnostics for transport of angular momentum in stars. I. Rotational splittings from the pre-main sequence to the red-giant branch. (2012, result): “These results are quite similar to what is found in the literature (see, e. g., Basu & Antia 2008; Basu et al. 1997; Turck-Chièze et al. 2011, for models with no rotation induced transport).”
• The Sirius System and Its Astrophysical Puzzles: Hubble Space Telescope and Ground-based Astrometry (2017, methodology): “The YREC models use the solar mixture of Grevesse & Sauval (1998, hereafter GS98), chosen for its compatibility with helioseismology (Basu & Antia 2008).”
• Scaled solar tracks and isochrones in a large region of the Z-Y plane. II. From 2.5 to 20 solar masses (2009, background): “Solar models computed with low heavy-element abundances also strongly disagree with the constraints from helioseismology (see Basu & Antia 2008, and references therein).”
• NEW SOLAR COMPOSITION: THE PROBLEM WITH SOLAR MODELS REVISITED (2009, background): “…et al. 2009), and to question the revision of the solar abundances, particularly those of C, N, O, Ne and Ar whose fractional abundances cannot be determined from meteoritic samples (Antia & Basu 2005, 2006; Bahcall et al. 2005; Delahaye & Pinsonneault 2006; Basu & Antia 2008).”
• MODULES FOR EXPERIMENTS IN STELLAR ASTROPHYSICS (MESA) (2010, result): “…inferred solar sound speed profile is compared with similar results from Bahcall et al. (1998, BBP98) and Serenelli et al. (2009, S09) in Figure 21 demonstrating that MESA star is capable of stellar evolution calculations at the level of one part in 10 3 demonstrated by others (Basu & Antia 2008).”
• The composition of Mars (2019, background): “One solution to the problem is to have a significant increase in the Sun’s abundance of Mg, Si, S and Fe, which leads to a hotter core temperature (Basu and Antia, 2008; Asplund et al., 2009; Bergemann and Serenelli, 2014).”
• Galaxy Zoo Green Peas: discovery of a class of compact extremely star-forming galaxies (2009, background): “Overall, we find the Peas have log[O/H] + 12∼ 8.7, subsolar (Z⊙ ∼0.5) as per measurements of Grevesse & Sauval (1998) and helioseismic measurements (Basu & Antia 2008), but nearth solar abundances of Asplund et al. (2005).”
• The chemical composition of the Sun (2009, methodology): “When instead employing the revised values of Asplund, Grevesse & Sauval (2005), this is no longer the case (e.g. Bahcall et al. 2005, Basu & Antia 2004, 2008, Delahaye & Pinsonneault 2006, Guzik, Watson & Cox 2005, Turck-Chièze et al. 2004).”