Seismic study of stellar convective cores

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Homi Bhabha Road, Mumbai 400005, India e-mail: anwesh@tifr.res.in

Corresponding author: H. M. Antia, antia@tifr.res.in

Received: 30 May 2001
Accepted: 24 July 2001

Abstract

It has been shown that a discontinuity in the derivatives of the sound speed at the edge of the convective regions inside a star gives rise to a characteristic oscillatory signal in the frequencies of stellar oscillations. This oscillatory signal has been suggested as a means to study the base of the outer convection zone in low mass stars and possibly the outer edge of the convective core in high mass stars. Using stellar models we show that because of a phenomenon similar to aliasing in a Fourier transform, it may not be possible to use this signal to detect the convective core. Nevertheless, it may be possible to determine the size of convective cores using the frequency separation .