Seismic diagnostics for transport of angular momentum in stars

I. Rotational splittings from the pre-main sequence to the red-giant branch

¹ Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Institut für Astrophysik, Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
e-mail: jmarques@astro.physik.uni-goettingen.de
² Observatoire de Paris, LESIA, CNRS UMR 8109, 92195 Meudon, France
³ Observatoire de Paris, GEPI, CNRS UMR 8111, 92195 Meudon, France
⁴ Institut de Physique de Rennes, Université de Rennes 1, CNRS UMR 6251, 35042 Rennes, France
⁵ Département de Physique, Université de Montréal, Montréal PQ H3C 3J7, Canada
⁶ LUPM – UM2/CNRS UMR 5299, Place Eugène Bataillon cc72, 34095 Montpellier, France
⁷ Institut d’Astrophysique, Géophysique et Océanographie de l’Université de Liège, Allée du 6 Août 17, 4000 Liège, Belgium
⁸ Departamento de Astrofísica, Centro de Astrobiología (INTA-CSIC), PO Box 78, 28691 Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain
⁹ Laboratoire Lagrange, UMR 7293, CNRS, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, Nice, France
¹⁰ Laboratoire AIM Paris-Saclay, CEA/DSM-CNRS-Université Paris Diderot, IRFU/SAp Centre de Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
¹¹ Observatoire de Paris, LUTH, CNRS UMR 8102, 92195 Meudon, France

Received: 13 August 2012
Accepted: 15 October 2012

Abstract

Context. Rotational splittings are currently measured for several main sequence stars and a large number of red giants with the space mission Kepler. This will provide stringent constraints on rotation profiles.

Aims. Our aim is to obtain seismic constraints on the internal transport and surface loss of the angular momentum of oscillating solar-like stars. To this end, we study the evolution of rotational splittings from the pre-main sequence to the red-giant branch for stochastically excited oscillation modes.

Methods. We modified the evolutionary code CESAM2K to take rotationally induced transport in radiative zones into account. Linear rotational splittings were computed for a sequence of 1.3 M_⊙ models. Rotation profiles were derived from our evolutionary models and eigenfunctions from linear adiabatic oscillation calculations.

Results. We find that transport by meridional circulation and shear turbulence yields far too high a core rotation rate for red-giant models compared with recent seismic observations. We discuss several uncertainties in the physical description of stars that could have an impact on the rotation profiles. For instance, we find that the Goldreich-Schubert-Fricke instability does not extract enough angular momentum from the core to account for the discrepancy. In contrast, an increase of the horizontal turbulent viscosity by 2 orders of magnitude is able to significantly decrease the central rotation rate on the red-giant branch.

Conclusions. Our results indicate that it is possible that the prescription for the horizontal turbulent viscosity largely underestimates its actual value or else a mechanism not included in current stellar models of low mass stars is needed to slow down the rotation in the radiative core of red-giant stars.