Relative importance of convective uncertainties in massive stars

Abstract

In this work, we investigate the impact of uncertainties due to convective boundary mixing (CBM), commonly called 'overshoot', namely the boundary location and the amount of mixing at the convective boundary, on stellar structure and evolution. For this we calculated two grids of stellar evolution models with the MESA code, each with the Ledoux and the Schwarzschild boundary criterion, and vary the amount of CBM. We calculate each grid with the initial masses of 15, 20, and 25 M-circle dot. We present the stellar structure of the models during the hydrogen and helium burning phases. In the latter, we examine the impact on the nucleosynthesis. We find a broadening of the main sequence with more CBM, which is more in agreement with observations. Furthermore, during the core hydrogen burning phase there is a convergence of the convective boundary location due to CBM. The uncertainties of the intermediate convective zone remove this convergence. The behaviour of this convective zone strongly affects the surface evolution of the model, i.e. how fast it evolves redwards. The amount of CBM impacts the size of the convective cores and the nucleosynthesis, e.g. the C-12 to O-16 ratio and the weak s-process. Lastly, we determine the uncertainty that the range of parameter values investigated introduces and we find differences of up to 70 per cent for the core masses and the total mass of the star.