alpha-element enhanced opacity tables and low-mass metal-rich stellar models

Abstract

We investigate the influence of both a new generation of low-temperature opacities and of various amounts of alpha-element enhancements on stellar evolution models. New stellar models with two different alpha-element mixtures and two sets of appropriate opacity tables are computed and compared. The influence of the different mixtures as well as that of the improved generation of opacity tables is investigated. It is found that around solar metallicity the new opacity tables have a drastic influence on stellar temperatures, which is mainly an effect of the new low-temperature tables, and not of variations in alpha-element enhancement factors. The latter, however, influence stellar lifetimes via systematic opacity effects at core temperatures. We trace the reason for the low-temperature table changes to errors in the old tables. We conclude that variations in alpha-element abundance ratios affect the main-sequence properties of super-solar metallicity stars significantly. Red giant branch effective temperatures depend only slightly on the specific mixture. Our older low-temperature opacity tables were shown to be erroneous and should no longer be used for stellar models with near- or super-solar metallicity. Corrected tables have already been produced.