International audienc

We investigate a model for the excitation of high‐order oscillations in roAp stars. In this model we assume that the strong concentration of magnetic field about the magnetic poles is enough to suppress convection. Thus the model considered is composed of two polar regions, in which convection is presumed to be suppressed totally, and an equatorial region, where the convection is unaffected. This model is generated by building pairs of locally spherically symmetrical equilibria to represent the polar and equatorial regions of the star, which are patched together below the base of the convection zone. Gravitational settling of heavy elements is taken into account by choosing appropriate chemical composition profiles for both the polar and equatorial regions. Our results indicate that the composite model is unstable against axisymmetric non‐radial high‐order modes of pulsation that are aligned with the magnetic poles. The oscillations are excited by the κ mechanism acting principally in the hydrogen ionization zones of the polar regions. The effect of the lateral inhomogeneity on the second frequency differences is also investigated; we find that the perturbation to them by the inhomogeneity is of the same order as the second differences themselves, thereby hindering potential attempts to use such differences to identify the degrees of the modes in a straightforward way.

We study the effect of a large‐scale surface magnetic field on the non‐radial acoustic modes of roAp stars. Special attention is given to the use of a variational principle which is used for determining the shifts in the frequencies with relative ease, enabling us to avoid having to calculate the perturbed eigenfunctions. With knowledge of the frequency shifts we then estimate the eigenfunctions in a simpler, albeit approximate way. The results indicate frequency shifts of the order of few μHz, which depend on the order, degree and azimuthal order of the mode. The loss of energy through Alfvén waves is also estimated from the imaginary parts of the frequency shifts. The results indicate that the loss is particularly high near specific frequencies. This might indicate the presence of a selection effect, which could make some modes more likely to be excited than others. However, our results do not explain why the modes observed appear always to be aligned with the axis of the magnetic field. Finally, the estimated perturbed eigenfunctions contain strong components of spherical harmonics that differ from those of the original unperturbed modes.