A&A 390, 1115-1118 (2002)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20020749
A. Bonanno1 - H. Schlattl2,3 - L. Paternò3
1 - INAF - Osservatorio Astrofisico di Catania, Città Universitaria,
95123 Catania, Italy
2 -
Astrophysics Research Institute, Liverpool John Moores
University, Twelve Quays House, Egerton Wharf, Birkenhead CH41 1LD,
UK
3 -
Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia
dell'Università, Sezione Astrofisica, Città Universitaria, 95123 Catania, Italy
Received 18 April 2002 / Accepted 13 May 2002
Abstract
We show that the inclusion of special relativistic
corrections in the revised OPAL and MHD equations of state has a
significant impact on the helioseismic determination of the solar age.
Models with relativistic corrections included lead to a reduction of about
with respect
to those obtained with the old OPAL or MHD EOS. Our best-fit value is
which is in remarkably good agreement
with the meteoritic value for the solar age.
We argue that the inclusion of relativistic corrections is important for
probing the evolutionary state of a star
by means of the small frequency separations
,
for spherical harmonic degrees
and radial order
.
Key words: Sun: interior - Sun: oscillations - equation of state
The possibility of using helioseismology to constrain the solar age has been
discussed by several authors in the past.
Very recently Dziembowski et al. (1999) have shown that the most robust and accurate method is
provided by the small frequency separation analysis (SFSA),
,
for spherical harmonic degrees
and radial order
(Tassoul 1980).
The important property of this quantity is its strong sensitivity to the sound-speed gradient near the solar centre and its weak dependence on the details of the treatment of the outer layers. Despite our ignorance of a reliable convection model for the solar envelope we are therefore able to verify how well our models are able to reproduce the deep radiative regions, in particular the solar core. Since the properties of the core are mainly determined by the present central hydrogen abundance, and the latter is influenced by the solar age, SFSA is a reliable tool to examine the seismic age of the Sun.
Adopting the OPAL equation of state (Rogers
et al. 1996) a seismic age of
has been obtained by
Dziembowski et al. (1999), which is consistent with the
meteoritic age
of Bahcall et al. (1995).
The aim of this paper is to show that an important ingredient in this
type of analysis is the usage of an accurate equation of state (EOS).
In particular, by the inclusion of the special relativistic corrections,
like in the updated version of the OPAL EOS, the helioseismic age of
the Sun is reduced to
,
which is in
remarkable agreement with the meteoritic value.
Elliott & Kosovichev (1998) have demonstrated that
the inclusion of relativistic corrections in
the EOS leads to a better agreement between the solar models and
the seismic Sun. By inverting SOI-MDI/SOHO p-mode frequencies
they found that the solar adiabatic exponent
is much
better reproduced by solar models including the relativistic contribution
to the Fermi-Dirac statistics. Since the improved EOS
causes a decrease of
in the adiabatic index
in the solar centre, the sound speed (
)
is
reduced by about 0.1%. Therefore, the influence of the
relativistic corrections should also be visible in the
small frequency separations
.
Indeed,
Bonanno et al. (2001) have found that including this effect in the value
of
improves the
agreement in
between solar models and observations,
thereby confirming the results of Elliott & Kosovichev (1998).
Model |
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EOS | ![]() |
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1 | 4.58 | OPAL 01 | 0.2755 | 0.01995 | 0.2453 | 0.01805 | 0.7132 | 0.3353 | 0.6432 | 152.87 | 15.73 | 3.89 |
2 | 4.58 | OPAL 96 | 0.2749 | 0.01995 | 0.2449 | 0.01806 | 0.7132 | 0.3289 | 0.6428 | 152.70 | 15.72 | 3.89 |
3 | 4.60 | OPAL 01 | 0.2752 | 0.01995 | 0.2451 | 0.01805 | 0.7125 | 0.3342 | 0.6443 | 153.16 | 15.73 | 3.89 |
4 | 4.60 | MHD-R | 0.2757 | 0.01997 | 0.2452 | 0.01805 | 0.7141 | 0.3341 | 0.6444 | 153.22 | 15.74 | 3.89 |
5 | 5.00 | OPAL 01 | 0.2714 | 0.02013 | 0.2405 | 0.01816 | 0.7082 | 0.3133 | 0.6650 | 159.82 | 15.84 | 3.89 |
6 | 4.58 | OPAL 01 | 0.2758 | 0.01989 | 0.2460 | 0.01803 | 0.7118 | 0.3362 | 0.6423 | 151.35 | 15.66 | 4.00 |
In addition to the age, the central hydrogen abundance is also
crucially dependent on the precise value of
,
the zero-energy
astrophysical S-factor for the proton-proton fusion cross section.
Schlattl et al. (1999) and Antia & Chitre (1999) have shown, using the old
version of the OPAL EOS, that an increase of
by about 4%
with
respect to Adelberger et al.'s (1998) value yields a
better agreement with the observed frequencies for an age of 4.57 Gyr.
For this reason we consider in our analysis also different values of
.
Including the updated OPAL EOS the best agreement between
meteoritic and seismic age could be achieved with Adelberger
et al.'s (1998)
.
Hence, by taking into account the relativistic corrections in the EOS
there is no need for an artificial increase of
,
as suggested by
previous works, in order to obtain a better agreement between seismic
and meteoritic age.
The code and physics used to compute the various solar models are described briefly in the next section, followed by the consequences for the seismic age obtained by means of the SFSA (Sect. 3). In the final part the results are discussed.
We computed a large number of solar models using the GARching SOlar Model (GARSOM) code which has been described in its latest version in Schlattl (2001). Our standard model has been compared with other contemporary solar models by Turck-Chièze et al. (1998), who found a good agreement between various programs.
The solar photospheric radius and luminosity have been assumed to be
(Brown & Christensen-Dalsgaard 1998) and
,
respectively. The surface
metal ratio
has been taken from Grevesse & Noels (1993), thus
Z/X=0.0245.
The mixing length parameter (Böhm-Vitense 1958), initial helium and metal
content have been adjusted in all models to reproduce these values
with an accuracy better than 10-4.
In the actual calculations the latest OPAL-opacities (Iglesias & Rogers 1996) completed in the low-temperature regime by tables of Alexander & Fergusson (1994) have been implemented. The outer boundary condition was determined assuming an Eddington grey atmosphere. Microscopic diffusion of hydrogen, helium and all major metals is taken into account. For the EOS we used either the OPAL- (Rogers et al. 1996) or the MHD-tables (Hummer & Mihalas 1988; Mihalas et al. 1988; Däppen et al. 1988). The original OPAL EOS (OPAL96) has been updated by treating electrons relativistically and by improving the activity expansion method for repulsive interactions (Rogers 2001), denoted OPAL01 in the following.
In the case of MHD EOS the relativistic corrections are not directly
included in the tables. We have therefore corrected the adiabatic index
employing the expression of Elliott & Kosovichev (1998),
The nuclear reaction rates are taken either from Bahcall et al. (1995) or
from Adelberger et al. (1998) with
being
in the first and
in the latter case. Other differences in the reaction rates are not
very significant in determining the evolutionary stage of the solar core.
We have computed solar models following the evolution from the zero-age main sequence
with ages ranging from 4.40 to 5.00 Gyr in steps of 0.1 Gyr.
Some basic quantities of a selection of models are summarized in
Table 1.
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Figure 1:
The differences of ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Open with DEXTER |
For the higher ages the initial helium content has to be reduced to obtain
the correct solar luminosity (compare models 1 and 5). Nevertheless, a
larger lifetime leads to a steeper He profile toward the centre
causing a larger central He abundance.
The consequent increase of the opacity near the core demands an
higher central temperature to produce the
same amount of energy. This effect is further
enhanced by
diffusion which is operating longer for greater ages and is further
increasing the central He content.
Since the relativistic correction to
increases with temperature
(Eq. (1)), the inclusion of relativistic effects has a larger
influence on older models. The
relative differences in the profiles of
and the density are shown
in Fig. 1.
Models with greater
,
but the same age, have a smaller
(see models 1 and 6 in Table 1), as
the hydrogen burning in the core is more efficient.
In order to determine the seismic age, we calculated for all the
solar models the small frequency separations
for
and
.
These values have been compared with latest GOLF/SOHO data for
,
which have been obtained from long time series, and where the
asymmetric line profile has been taken into account during the data reduction
(Thiery et al. 2000). Only the frequencies of the mean multiplet (m=0)
are used, as for them the influence of rotation is smallest.
For the analysis, the
method has been used, as in
Dziembowski et al. (1999) or Schlattl et al. (1999);
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Figure 2:
The differences of the quantity
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EOS |
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OPAL96 | 3.89 |
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1.05 |
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1.66 |
OPAL01 | 3.89 |
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1.45 |
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1.66 |
MHD | 3.89 |
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1.00 |
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1.65 |
MHD-R | 3.89 |
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1.07 |
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1.25 |
OPAL01 | 4.00 |
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1.34 |
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1.47 |
The results for the -values in models with different ages
are shown in Figs. 3 and 4. The best-fit age
given by the minimal
-value (
and the
error determined by the condition
are summarized in Table 2.
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Figure 3:
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Open with DEXTER |
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Figure 4:
Same as Fig. 3, but for ![]() |
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It is worth noticing that with
the minimum
-value slightly improves for both
and
(Table 2).
Using OPAL01 EOS, which includes the relativistic corrections
in a consistent way, we obtain in this case as the best-fit age
Gyr, where we have taken
the mean of the best-fit value for
and
.
This
provides our most reliable value for the seismic solar age.
By using updated versions of the OPAL and MHD EOS the seismic age of the Sun has been redetermined using SFSA with the latest GOLF/SOHO data. The important new ingredient in both equations of state is the inclusion of the special relativistic corrections. In both cases almost the same age has been obtained.
A crucial quantity in the determination of the seismic age is the
proton-proton fusion rate. With the older
versions of the equations of state, a rate about 4% higher as
the value of Adelberger et al. (1998) appears to be favoured, in
order to obtain a better agreement between seismic and meteoritic
ages. However, with the updated versions of the OPAL and MHD EOS the
seismic age obtained with
Adelberger et al.'s (1998)
value for
is
Gyr, which is
in excellent agreement with the meteoritic age of 4.57 Gyr (Bahcall
et al. 1995).
Therefore, the presently favoured value for
is
.
However, since the uncertainties, in particular,
in the opacities are supposed to be of the order of a few percent,
can only be determined with a similar accuracy by comparing
seismic and meteoritic ages.
A further source of uncertainty is the centrifugal and magnetic distortion, but these effects can be neglected for the Sun, as discussed by Dziembowski et al. (1999).
We expect to have asteroseismic data on solar-type
stars with a precision of about
from future space missions or
high-precision ground-based multi-site spectrographic observations.
We thus think that this effect must be included in the
standard modelling of solar-like stars when discussing the
evolutionary changes in the stellar core.
Acknowledgements
We thank H. M. Antia for many helpful discussions. The work of H. S. is supported by a Marie Curie Fellowship of the European Community programme "Human Potential'' under contract number HPMF-CT-2000-00951.