Pulsation And Mass Loss In Stars

Stellar mass loss is an essential part of the cycling of material from the interstellar medium into stars and back, and must be understood if we are to model processes on galactic to cosmological scales. The study of stellar winds and the effects of stellar mass loss has reached a particularly exciting stage where observational capabilities are increasingly able to provide interesting constraints on models and theories. Recent resu1ts from theoretical and observational work for both hot and cool stars with substantial winds have led to the suggestion that a combination of pulsation with other mechanisms makes for particularly efficient mass loss from stars. This provided the original motivation for the organization of this workshop. The conference was organized along relatively conventional lines according to the types of objects being scrutinized. However the true unity of the proceedings comes from the interplay of the mechanisms involved. For example, for the cool, luminous Mira variables, pulsation leads to shock waves that extend the atmosphere, enhancing dust formation; radiation pressure on dust drives the wind, cooling the atmosphere and in some cases suppressing the shocks. Similarly for the Be stars, both pulsation (in this case, non-radial) and radiation pressure (due to UV resonance lines) are expected to be important, and this expectation is at least qualitatively borne out by the observations.

In this Symposium, researchers specializing in pulsation, rotation, magnetic fields and stellar winds are brought together for the first time in order to broaden our understanding of O and B stars. Thanks to advances in digital spectroscopy, new types of pulsating B stars have been discovered. The pulsations can be understood in terms of the recent revision of metal opacities, but the effects of rapid rotation and magnetic fields need further study. Observations in the UV and X-ray regions demonstrate that many B and Be stars show other activity, besides pulsation which is not yet understood. The reason for the enhanced mass loss in Be stars is a question which dominates the Symposium and which remains unanswered, although it is surely to be found in activity at or near the photosphere coupled with rotation. It is shown that the geometry of the circumstellar envelopes around Be stars is indeed a flattened disk as they can now be optically resolved. The variability of radiatively-driven winds from O and B stars are likely related to the rotation of the star. This underlines the central theme of the book: that the various phenomena seen in these stars cannot be studied in isolation.

Fundamental unsolved problems of stellar astrophysics include the effects of angular momentum on stellar structure and evolution, the nature and efficiency of the processes by which angular momentum is redistributed within and lost from stars, and the role that stellar rotation plays in enhancing or driving stellar mass loss. There appears to be a qualitative change in the nature and efficiency of these mechanisms near spectral type FO: hotter (more massive) stars typically retain more angular momentum at least until they reach the main sequence, while cooler stars typically spin down quickly. For the hotter stars, recent work suggests a strong link between the type of pulsation behavior, the mass loss rates, and the rotation velocity. If the same mechanisms are able to drive mass loss from the main sequence A stars, as has recently been proposed, then the current interpretations of a number of observations will be drastically affected: e. g. the ages of clusters may be incorrect by up to a factor of two, and the surface abundances of isotopes of He, Li and Be may no longer give constraints on cosmological nucleosynthesis. There are also effects on the evolution of the abundances of elements in the interstellar medium and on the general evolution of populations of stars. Thus the questions of the mechanisms of angular momentum and mass loss of stars more massive than the sun is important not only for stellar studies but for the foundations of much of modern astrophysics.

This book surveys our understanding of stars which change in brightness because they pulsate. Pulsating variable stars are keys to distance scales inside and beyond the Milky Way galaxy. They test our understanding not only of stellar pulsation theory but also of stellar structure and evolution theory. Moreover, pulsating stars are important probes of the formation and evolution of our own and neighboring galaxies. Our understanding of pulsating stars has greatly increased in recent years as large-scale surveys of pulsating stars in the Milky Way and other Local Group galaxies have provided a wealth of new observations and as space-based instruments have studied particular pulsating stars in unprecedented detail.

'Understanding Stellar Evolution' is based on a series of graduate-level courses taught at the University of Washington since 2004, and is written for physics and astronomy students and for anyone with a physics background who is interested in stars. It describes the structure and evolution of stars, with emphasis on the basic physical principles and the interplay between the different processes inside stars such as nuclear reactions, energy transport, chemical mixing, pulsation, mass loss, and rotation. Based on these principles, the evolution of low- and high-mass stars is explained from their formation to their death. In addition to homework exercises for each chapter, the text contains a large number of questions that are meant to stimulate the understanding of the physical principles. An extensive set of accompanying lecture slides is available for teachers in both Keynote(R) and PowerPoint(R) formats.

How can the interior of the Sun, white dwarfs and other stars be studied by stellar seismology? What can Doppler imaging tell us about high-degree pulsations? What impact are CCD and infrared observations having on extending the Cepheid and RR Lyrae distance scale? And how are other classes of pulsators providing independent checks of the distance scale? These and many other critical questions are answered in this timely review of the dramatic advances made in pulsating star research in the last decade. This survey collects together more than thirty comprehensive reviews and over one hundred summaries of research papers from the 139th IAU Colloquium, held in Victoria, British Columbia. Together these cover all aspects of recent developments in the field of variable star research and preview some of the exciting advances anticipated for the next decade. This volume provides an essential review for graduate students and researchers.

Editing the proceedings of a scientific meeting is not an easy task. Sometimes people who give an excellent talk do not send the manuscript by the deadline. However, this time, thanks to the punctuality of all the participants, we have this excellent volume for the workshop on mass losing pulsating stars and their circumstellar matter prepared in time. Almost all of the oral presentations including the summary are collected in this volume. We regret that we cannot put in this volume a few posters that we failed to receive before the editorial work. The workshop was planned as a small meeting with less than fifty attendants because the city of Sendai was far from the most of the active institutions. However, the number of submitted papers exceeded the SOC's expectation; many interesting contributions had to be scheduled in the poster session. Still, the oral sessions were so tight that many participants might have felt frustrated for the shortage of discussions. The organizers of the workshop have to apologize to the attendants for the inconvenience caused from such a happy underestimate about the size of the workshop.