Speaker: Koushik Sen & , Chair: Tasha Gautam
Title: Stellar Engineering
Abstract:
Massive stars play an important role in the evolution of the Universe: they provide mechanical feedback through strong winds, ionize their surrounding ISM by radiation and enrich it with s-process elements via a supernova explosion. However, the internal mixing processes like semi-convection and overshooting is not well constrained, thereby introducing significant uncertainties in the evolution of massive stars. Particularly, the post main sequence phase is like a magnifying glass which highlights the fallacies in calculations of the earlier stages of evolution. The fraction of Helium burning lifetime a star spends as a Blue or Red Supergiant is strongly dependent on these mixing processes. Through a grid of stellar models, I try to study the factors which influence the Helium burning phase in the evolution of these stars.