Matteo Cantiello edited White Dwarfs.tex  over 10 years ago

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\subsection{White Dwarfs}  While burning helium the star enriches its convective core with carbon and oxygen. At the same time the H-burning shell produces He which is accumulated around the growing CO core. At the end of core He burning the energy generation occurs in two shells (burning H and He) moving outwards in mass coordinate while the star moves upwards along the asymptotic giant branch (AGB). At some point the shell sources become He-shell becomes  secularly unstable, giving rise to thermal pulses. pulses (TP-AGB).  These pulses grow in intensity and  are thought to play an important role in driving the enhance  mass loss that leads loss, ultimately leading  to the a complete  removal of the H-envelope H-envelope, a planetary nebula  and the transition to the white dwarf cooling sequence. However the The  details of this phase are not well understood. understood and the transition time from the AGB to the WD cooling sequence depends on the treatment of mass-loss beyond the AGB. Note however that the timescale for angular momentum transport between core and envelope are much longer than the range of timescales discussed for the duration of this phase, so that the results on the angular momentum content of WD should not depend strongly on the particular treatment of this phase. % MC: Check this statement   In our calculations during the AGB phase we adopt the mass loss prescription of \citet{Bloecker:1995} multiplied by an efficiency factor $\eta = 10$.    When He is completely depleted   Following He depletion in their cores, nuclear burning occurs in two shells (H and He). The star increases again its radius and luminosity and climbs the in climb the asymptotic giant branch.