Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (Mesa): Binaries, Pulsations, and Explosions

Paxton, Bill; Marchant, Pablo; Schwab, Josiah; Bauer, Evan B.; Bildsten, Lars; Cantiello, Matteo; Dessart, Luc; Farmer, Robert; Hu, Haili; Langer, N.; Townsend, R. H. D.; Townsley, Dean M.; Timmes, F. X.

doi:10.1088/0067-0049/220/1/15

Cited by 2,457 publications

(1,696 citation statements)

References 192 publications

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“…We carried out binary evolution calculations with a newlydeveloped Henyey code called MESA (Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics, Paxton et al 2011Paxton et al , 2013Paxton et al , 2015. The advantages of MESA for our calculations are the inclusion of equations of state that are able to handle the low mass and high degree of degeneracy that the donors achieve, and the powerful capabilities of handling the huge fluctuations during the evolution such as H or He flashes.…”

Section: The Computationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Formation of EL CVn-type Binaries

Chen

Maxted

et al. 2017

Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc.

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EL CVn-type binaries are eclipsing binaries that contain an A-or F-type dwarf star and a very low mass (∼ 0.2M ⊙ ) helium white dwarf precursor (proto-He WD). A number of such objects have been discovered in the WASP and Kepler photometric surveys. Here we have studied the formation of EL CVn-type binaries and give the properties and the space density of this population of stars in the Galaxy. We show that EL CVn binaries cannot be produced by common envelope evolution as previously believed because this process leads to merging of the components when giants have such low-mass cores. Stable mass transfer in low-mass binaries, from more than 65,000 runs of Population I binary evolution, may well reproduce the properties of EL CVn stars such as the evolutionary phase, mass ratios and the WD mass-period (M WD − P ) relation. The study shows that the most common donor mass range for producing the observed EL CVn-type stars is 1.15 − 1.20M ⊙ and that the lifetime of such objects increases dramatically with decreasing proto-He WD mass. This leads to an intrinsic peak mass around the minimum mass of proto-He WDs of ∼ 0.16M ⊙ . The most probable proto-He WD mass is 0.17 − 0.21M ⊙ after selection effects included. We estimated the number of EL CVn stars with P ≤ 2.2 d to be 2 − 5 × 10 6 in the Galaxy, indicating a local density of 4 − 10 × 10 −6 pc −3 . We conclude that many more EL CVntype binaries remain to be discovered and that these binaries will be predominantly low-mass systems in old stellar populations.

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Section: The Computationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Formation of EL CVn-type Binaries

Chen

Maxted

et al. 2017

Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc.

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“…We construct stellar models using MESA (Modules for Experiments in Stellar Evolution, release 7456, Paxton et al 2013Paxton et al , 2015, evolving them from the zero-age MS to the end of core He burning. The models are nonrotating and adopt the OPAL opacity tables (Iglesias & Rogers 1996) and an initial metallicity of Z = 0.02 with a mixture taken from Asplund et al (2005).…”

Section: Red Giant Branchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asteroseismic Signatures of Evolving Internal Stellar Magnetic Fields

Cantiello

Fuller

Bildsten

2016

ApJ

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Recent asteroseismic analyses indicate the presence of strong (B  10 5 G) magnetic fields in the cores of many red giant stars. Here, we examine the implications of these results for the evolution of stellar magnetic fields, and we make predictions for future observations. Those stars with suppressed dipole modes indicative of strong core fields should exhibit moderate but detectable quadrupole mode suppression. The long magnetic diffusion times within stellar cores ensure that dynamo-generated fields are confined to mass coordinates within the main-sequence (MS) convective core, and the observed sharp increase in dipole mode suppression rates above 1.5 M e is likely explained by the larger convective core masses and faster rotation of these more massive stars. In clump stars, core fields of ∼10 5 G can suppress dipole modes, whose visibility should be equal to or less than the visibility of suppressed modes in ascending red giants. High dipole mode suppression rates in low-mass (M  2 M e ) clump stars would indicate that magnetic fields generated during the MS can withstand subsequent convective phases and survive into the compact remnant phase. Finally, we discuss implications for observed magnetic fields in white dwarfs and neutron stars, as well as the effects of magnetic fields in various types of pulsating stars.

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“…The instrument we treat as our black box code for this study is MESA (Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics) [7,8,9]. The MESA code is open source and is widely used in astrophysical research.…”

Section: Case Study: the Mesa Simulation Instrumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantification of Incertitude in Black Box Simulation Codes

Calder

Hoffman

Willcox

et al. 2018

J. Phys.: Conf. Ser.

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Abstract. We present early results from a study addressing the question of how one treats the propagation of incertitude, that is, epistemic uncertainty, in input parameters in astrophysical simulations. As an example, we look at the propagation of incertitude in control parameters for stellar winds in MESA stellar evolution simulations. We apply two methods of incertitude propagation, the Cauchy Deviates method and the Quadratic Response Surface method, to quantify the output uncertainty in the final white dwarf mass given a range of values for wind parameters. The methodology we apply is applicable to the problem of propagating input incertitudes through any simulation code treated as a "black box," i.e. a code for which the algorithmic details are either inaccessible or prohibitively complicated. We have made the tools developed for this study freely available to the community. IntroductionMuch of theoretical astrophysics relies on large-scale simulation for progress because phenomena of interest typically incorporate multiple physical processes interacting over a wide range of scales. Even study of the basic processes, e.g. plasma and fluid dynamics, requires simulations that can challenge extant computer architectures. Because of both the importance of simulation and the dynamic nature of state-of-the-art computer architectures, considerable resources go into the development and maintenance of simulation codes. Many of these advanced codes, built with person-years of development effort, are made publicly available and are used currently by many investigators in addition to the original developers.Despite the capabilities of modern codes and architectures, uncertainty imposes limits on the results of simulations. This issue is often neglected in studies in part because of the difficulty in addressing it. As with verification and validation, uncertainty quantification is critical to credible computational science, particularly in astrophysics where most simulation results are predictions, that is, a description of the state of a system under conditions for which the computational model has not been validated [1,2,3].

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Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (Mesa): Binaries, Pulsations, and Explosions

Cited by 2,457 publications

References 192 publications

The Formation of EL CVn-type Binaries

The Formation of EL CVn-type Binaries

Asteroseismic Signatures of Evolving Internal Stellar Magnetic Fields

Quantification of Incertitude in Black Box Simulation Codes

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