Stellar models: firm evidence, open questions and future developments

Abstract

During this last decade our knowledge of the evolutionary properties of stars has significantly improved. This result has been achieved thanks to our improved understanding of the physical behavior of stellar matter in the thermal regimes characteristic of the different stellar mass ranges and/or evolutionary stages. This notwithstanding, the current generation of stellar models is still affected by several, not negligible, uncertainties related to our poor knowledge of some thermodynamical processes and nuclear reaction rates, as well as the efficiency of mixing processes. These drawbacks have to be properly taken into account when comparing theory with observations, to derive evolutionary properties of both resolved and unresolved stellar populations. In this paper we review the major sources of uncertainty along the main evolutionary stages, and emphasize their impact on population synthesis techniques.

10 pages, 3 figures, Keynote review talk at the IAU Symp. 262 "Stellar Populations - Planning the Next Decade" of the XXVIIth IAU General Assembly held in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Proceeding eds. G. Bruzual & S. Charlot

References in corpus (8)

• The propagation of uncertainties in stellar population synthesis modeling I: The relevance of uncertain aspects of stellar evolution and the IMF to the derived physical properties of galaxies
• Updated Electron-Conduction Opacities: The Impact on Low-Mass Stellar Models
• Scaled solar tracks and isochrones in a large region of the Z-Y plane I. From the ZAMS to the TP-AGB end for 0.15 - 2.5 Mo stars
• Spectral models for solar-scaled and alpha-enhanced stellar populations
• The First Empirical Mass Loss Law for Population II Giants
• On the Use of Blanketed Atmospheres as Boundary Conditions for Stellar Evolutionary Models
• The impact of systematic uncertainties in stellar parameters on integrated spectra of stellar populations
• Evidence for Blue Straggler Stars Rejuvenating the Integrated Spectra of Globular Clusters

Cited by in corpus (4)

• ARGOS III: Stellar Populations in the Galactic Bulge of the Milky Way
• Distance to Galactic globulars using the near-infrared magnitudes of RR Lyrae stars: IV. The case of M5 (NGC5904)
• On the magnitude difference between the main sequence turn off and the red giant branch bump in Galactic globular clusters
• The impact of an updated ${}^{14}N(p,\gamma {)}^{15}O$ reaction rate on advanced evolutionary stages of low-mass stellar models