Interesting News… Regulus Age: a few hundred million years Mass: 3.5 solar masses Rotation Period: <1 day Equatorial Velocity: 200 km s -1 Axial tilt: 86 degrees from celestial north Gravity darkening: poles 15,000K equator 10,000K 5 times brighter at the poles Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA at Georgia State )

Review of Lecture 4 Forms of the radiative transfer equation Conditions of radiative equilibrium Gray atmospheres –Eddington Approximation Limb darkening

Convective Energy Transport/Chapter 7 Stability criterion for convection Adiabatic temperature gradient When is convection important Convection in the Sun The Mixing Length Formalism

Criterion for Stability against Convection If we displace an element of gas, will it continue to move in the same direction? P 2 ’ = P 2 If  2 ’ <  2, the element will continue to rise. P 2 ’=P 2  2 ’ T 2 ’ Initial gas: P 1,  1, T 1 P 2,  2, T 2 Displaced gas

Stability against Convection Since P 2 =P 2 ’ (the gas will adjust to equalize the pressure), then  2 T 2 =  2 ’T 2 ’ To be stable against convection,  2 ’ must be greater than  2 Thus, T 2 must be greater than T 2 ’ That is, the temperature in the moving element must decrease more rapidly than in the surrounding medium: dT/dr element > dT/dr surroundings

Stability Criterion in Terms of Pressure Since pressure falls upward in the atmosphere, the stability criterion can be rewritten as: Take the derivative and multiply by P/T to get: or

Adiabatic Equilibrium If the surroundings are in radiative equilibrium, and no heat is transferred between the element and the surrounding gas, the rising gas is said to be in adiabatic equilibrium (i.e. no energy transfer). For gas in adiabatic equilibrium, PV  = constant and where  = 5/3 for ionized gas and is less for neutral or incompletely ionized regions near the surface. (Recall that  is related to the polytropic index as  = n/(n+1) and is the ratio of the specific heat of the gas under constant pressure to the specific heat of the gas under constant volume.)

The Temperature Gradient If the gradient then the gas is stable against convection. For levels of the atmosphere at which ionization fractions are changing, there is also a dlog  /dlogP term in the equation which lowers the temperature gradient at which the atmosphere becomes unstable to convection. Complex molecules in the atmosphere have the same effect of making the atmosphere more likely to be convective.

Class Investigation Using the Kurucz models provided, map out the effective temperatures and surface gravities at which significant flux is carried by convection at a level where T=1.5 T eff for main sequence stars and for supergiants. Again, assume  = 5/3.

When Is Convection Important? When opacities are high, temperature gradients become steep (i.e. the opacity is so large that the transfer of energy by radiation is inefficient) Stars of F and cooler spectral type have surface convection zones Surface convection zones become deeper with later spectral types until the cool M dwarfs, which are fully convective Surface convection drives the formation of chromospheres, and acoustic or magnetic transport may play a role in carrying energy above the temperature minimum at the top of the photosphere Convection is also important in stellar interiors

Convection in the Sun Each granule is the top of a rising column of hot gas, and the granules are surrounded by cooler falling gas characteristics –1000 km in size –  T~200K –velocity~200 m s -1 The distance from  = 1 to  =25 is less than about 100 km, just a fraction of the size of a convective cell

Convection – the Movie! SVST (La Palma)

The Mixing Length Formalism stability criterion for convection need a mathematical formalism to compute the flux carried by convection in a stellar atmosphere (unsolved problem) Mixing length formalism (developed in the 1950’s by Erika Bohm-Vitense) is still the most widely used treatment of convection A proper theory of convection is beginning to emerge from 2D and 3D hydrodynamical calculations

Definition of the Mixing Length The mixing length L is the distance traveled by a convective cell before merging into the surrounding medium The “mixing length to pressure scale height ratio” (  = L/H) just expresses the assumed mixing length in terms of a characteristic atmospheric length H (the distance over which the pressure is reduced by the factor e) In the case of no convection,  =0 When convection is present,  is typically assumed to be about 1.5, although values from zero up to 2-3 are used.

Calibration of the Mixing Length Parameter Using helioseismology –  = / From cluster CMDs Straniero et al ApJ, 490, 425