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Xianfei Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Xianfei Zhang.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

The role of radial migration on tracing lithium evolution in the Galactic disk

With the calculated guiding center radius $R_{guiding}$ and birth radius $R_{birth}$, we investigate the role of radial migration on the description of lithium evolution in the Galactic disk based on the upper envelope of the A(Li) vs. [Fe/H] diagram. Using migration distances, we find that stars in the solar neighborhood are born at different locations in the galactic disk, and cannot all be explained by models of chemical evolution in the solar neighborhood. It is found that the upper envelope of the A(Li) vs. [Fe/H] diagram varies significantly with $R_{birth}$, which explains the decrease of Li for super-metal-rich (SMR) stars because they are non-young stars born in the inner disk. The upper envelope of Li-$R_{birth}$ plane fits very well with chemical evolution models by Grisoni et al. for $R_{birth} = 7 - 12$ kpc, outside which young stars generally lack sufficient time to migrate to the solar neighborhood. For stars born in the solar neighborhood, the young open clusters and the upper envelope of field stars with age $<$ 3 Gyr fit well with theoretical prediction. We find that calculations using stars with ages less than 3 Gyr are necessary to obtain an undepleted Li upper envelope, and that stars with solar age (around 4.5 Gyr) have depleted around 0.3 dex from the original value based on the chemical evolution model of Grisoni et al.

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Distribution of fast radio burst dispersion measures in CHIME/FRB Catalog 1: implications on the origin of FRBs

Recently, CHIME/FRB project published its first fast radio burst (FRB) catalog (hereafter, Catalog 1), which totally contains 536 unique bursts. With the help of the latest set of FRBs in this large-size catalog, we aim to investigate the dispersion measure (DM) or redshift ($z$) distribution of the FRB population, and solution of this problem could be used to clarify the question of FRB origin. In this study, we adopted the M\&E 2018 model, to fit the observed $z$ distribution of FRBs in Catalog 1. In the M\&E 2018 model, we are mostly interested in the $Φ(z)$ function, i.e., number of bursts per proper time per comoving volume, which is represented by the star formation rate (SFR) with a power-law index $n$. Our estimated value of $n$ is $0.0_{-0.0}^{+0.6}$ ($0.0_{-0.0}^{+2.1}$) at the 68 (95) per cent confidence level, implying that the FRB population evolves with redshift consistent with, or faster than, the SFR. Specially, the consistency of the $n$ values estimated by this study and the SFR provides a potential support for the hypothesis of FRBs originating from young magnetars.

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Discovery of post-mass-transfer helium-burning red giants using asteroseismology

A star expands to become a red giant when it has fused all the hydrogen in its core into helium. If the star is in a binary system, its envelope can overflow onto its companion or be ejected into space, leaving a hot core and potentially forming a subdwarf-B star. However, most red giants that have partially transferred envelopes in this way remain cool on the surface and are almost indistinguishable from those that have not. Among $\sim$7000 helium-burning red giants observed by NASA's Kepler mission, we use asteroseismology to identify two classes of stars that must have undergone dramatic mass loss, presumably due to stripping in binary interactions. The first class comprises about 7 underluminous stars with smaller helium-burning cores than their single-star counterparts. Theoretical models show that these small cores imply the stars had much larger masses when ascending the red giant branch. The second class consists of 32 red giants with masses down to 0.5 M$_\odot$, whose implied ages would exceed the age of the universe had no mass loss occurred. The numbers are consistent with binary statistics, and our results open up new possibilities to study the evolution of post-mass-transfer binary systems.

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Lithium Evolution of Giant Stars Observed by LAMOST and Kepler

Mapping lithium evolution for evolved stars will provide restrictions and constraints on the fundamental stellar interior physical processes, which further shed light on our understanding of the theory of stellar structure and evolution. Based on a sample of 1,848 giants with known evolutionary phases and lithium abundances from the LAMOST-\kepler{} and LAMOST-\emph{K}2 fields, we construct mass-radius diagrams to characterize the evolutionary features of lithium. The stars at red giant branch (RGB) phase show natural depletion along with their stellar evolution, particularly, there is no obvious crowd stars with anomalously high Li abundances near the bump. Most of the low-mass stars reaching their zero-age sequence of core-helium-burning (ZAHeB) have Li abundances around $\sim1.0$\,dex, which show an increase of Li abundance by $\sim0.6$\,dex compared to the stars above the bump of RGB. This suggests the helium flash can be responsible for moderate Li production. While for super Li-rich stars, some special mechanisms should be considered during helium flash. Other scenarios, such as merger, could also be interpretations given the Li-rich stars can be found at anytime during the steady state phase of core He-burning. During the core He-burning (HeB) phase, there is no indication of obvious lithium depletion.

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Post-merger evolution of double helium white dwarfs and distribution of helium-rich hot subdwarfs

The mergers of double helium white dwarfs are believed to form isolated helium-rich hot subdwarfs. Observation shows that the helium-rich hot subdwarfs can be divided into two subgroups based on whether the surface is carbon-rich or carbon-normal. But it is not clear whether this distribution directly comes from binary evolution. We adopt the binary population synthesis (BPS) to obtain the population of single helium-rich hot subdwarfs according to the channel of double helium white dwarfs merger. We find that the merger channel can represent the two subgroups in the $T_{\rm{eff}}-\log g$ plane related to different masses of progenitor helium white dwarfs. For $Z$ = 0.02, the birth rates and local density of helium-rich hot subdwarf stars by the mergers of two helium white dwarfs is $\sim 4.82 \times 10^{-3}$ $\rm yr^{-1}$ and $\sim$ 290.0 $\rm kpc^{-3}$ at 13.7 Gyr in our Galaxy, respectively. The proportion of carbon-rich and carbon-normal helium-rich hot subdwarfs are 32$\%$ and 68$\%$, respectively.

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Mode Angular Degree Identification in Subgiant Stars with Convolutional Neural Networks based on Power Spectrum

Identifying the angular degrees $l$ of oscillation modes is essential for asteroseismology and depends on visual tagging before fitting power spectra in a so-called peakbagging analysis. In oscillating subgiants, radial ($l$= 0) mode frequencies distributed linearly in frequency, while non-radial ($l$ >= 1) modes are p-g mixed modes that having a complex distribution in frequency, which increased the difficulty of identifying $l$. In this study, we trained a 1D convolutional neural network to perform this task using smoothed oscillation spectra. By training simulation data and fine-tuning the pre-trained network, we achieved a 95 per cent accuracy on Kepler data.

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Variations of helioseismic parameters due to magnetic field generated by a flux transport model

The change of sound speed has been found at the base of the convection during the solar cycles, which can be used to constrain the solar internal magnetic field. We aim to check whether the magnetic field generated by the solar dynamo can lead to the cyclic variation of the sound speed detected through helioseismology. The basic configuration of magnetic field in the solar interior was obtained by using a Babcock-Leighton (BL) type flux transport dynamo. We reconstructed one-dimensional solar models by assimilating magnetic field generated by an established dynamo and examined their influences on the structural variables. The results show that magnetic field generated by the dynamo is able to cause noticeable change of the sound speed profile at the base of the convective zone during a solar cycle. Detailed features of this theoretical prediction are also similar to those of the helioseismic results in solar cycle 23 by adjusting the free parameters of the dynamo model.

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Merged white dwarfs and nucleosynthesis

Orbital decay mechanisms argue that double white dwarf mergers are inevitable, but extremely rare. Whilst some mergers result in explosions, the survivors re-ignite helium and burn brightly for tens of thousands or millions of years. Candidate survivors include extreme helium stars, R CrB variables and various classes of helium-rich subluminous star. Nuclear waste on the survivors' surfaces provides evidence of the stars' nuclear history prior to and their nucleosynthesis during the merger. Extensive and deep spectroscopic surveys offer rich prospects for future discoveries.

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Most Lithium-rich Low-mass Evolved Stars Revealed as Red Clump stars by Asteroseismology and Spectroscopy

Lithium has confused scientists for decades at almost each scale of the universe. Lithium-rich giants are peculiar stars with lithium abundances over model prediction. A large fraction of lithium-rich low-mass evolved stars are traditionally supposed to be red giant branch (RGB) stars. Recent studies, however, report that red clump (RC) stars are more frequent than RGB. Here, we present a uniquely large systematic study combining the direct asteroseismic analysis with the spectroscopy on the lithium-rich stars. The majority of lithium-rich stars are confirmed to be RCs, whereas RGBs are minor. We reveal that the distribution of lithium-rich RGBs steeply decline with the increasing lithium abundance, showing an upper limit around 2.6 dex, whereas the Li abundances of RCs extend to much higher values. We also find that the distributions of mass and nitrogen abundance are notably different between RC and RGB stars. These findings indicate that there is still unknown process that significantly affects surface chemical composition in low-mass stellar evolution.

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What binary systems are the most likely sources for periodically repeating FRBs?

The newly discovered 16.35 days period for repeating FRB 180916.J0158+65 provides an essential clue for understanding the sources and emission mechanism of repeating FRBs. Many models propose that the periodically repeating FRBs might be related to binary star systems that contain at least one neutron star (NSC-FRB system). It has been suggested that the NS "combed" by the strong wind from a companion star might provide a solution. Following the "Binary Comb" model, we use the population synthesis method to study in detail the properties of the companion stars and the nature of NSC-FRB systems. Our main findings are: 1) the companion star is most likely to be a B-type star; 2) the period of 16 days of FRB 180916 happens to fall in the most probable period range, which may explain why FRB 180916 was the first detected periodically repeating FRB, and we expect to observe more periodically repeating FRBs with periods around 10-30 days; 3) the birth rate for NSC-FRB system is large enough to fulfill the event rate requirement set by the observation of FRB 180916, which supports the proposal that NSC-FRB can provide one significant channel for producing periodically repeating FRBs.

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Solar-type Stars Observed by LAMOST and Kepler

Obtaining measurements of chromospheric and photometric activity of stars with near-solar fundamental parameters and rotation periods is important for a better understanding of solar-stellar connection. We select a sample of 2603 stars with near-solar fundamental parameters from the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST)-Kepler field and use LAMOST spectra to measure their chromospheric activity and Kepler light curves to measure their photospheric activity (i.e., the amplitude of the photometric variability). While the rotation periods of 1556 of these stars could not be measured due to the low amplitude of the photometric variability and highly irregular temporal profile of light curves, 254 stars were further identified as having near-solar rotation periods. We show that stars with near-solar rotation periods have chromospheric activities that are systematically higher than stars with undetected rotation periods. Furthermore, while the solar level of photospheric and chromospheric activity appears to be typical for stars with undetected rotation periods, the Sun appears to be less active than most stars with near-solar rotation periods (both in terms of photospheric and chromospheric activity).

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Magnetic Activity of F-, G-, and K-type Stars in the LAMOST-Kepler Field

Monitoring chromospheric and photospheric indexes of magnetic activity can provide valuable information, especially the interaction between different parts of the atmosphere and their response to magnetic fields. We extract chromospheric indexes, S and Rhk+, for 59,816 stars from LAMOST spectra in the LAMOST-Kepler program, and photospheric index, Reff, for 5575 stars from Kepler light curves. The log Reff shows positive correlation with log Rhk+. We estimate the power-law indexes between Reff and Rhk+ for F-, G-, and K-type stars, respectively. We also confirm the dependence of both chromospheric and photospheric activity on stellar rotation. Ca II H and K emissions and photospheric variations generally decrease with increasing rotation periods for stars with rotation periods exceeding a few days. The power-law indexes in exponential decay regimes show different characteristics in the two activity-rotation relations. The updated largest sample including the activity proxies and reported rotation periods provides more information to understand the magnetic activity for cool stars.

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Population synthesis of helium white dwarf--red giant star mergers and the formation of lithium-rich giants and carbon stars

The formation histories of lithium-rich and carbon-rich red giants are not yet understood. It has been proposed that the merger of a helium-core white dwarf with a red giant branch star might provide a solution. We have computed an extended grid of post-merger evolution models and combined these with predictions of binary star population synthesis. The results strongly support the proposal that the merger of a helium white dwarf with a red giant branch star can provide the progenitors of both lithium-rich red clump stars and early-R carbon stars. The distribution of post-merger models in $T_{\rm eff}$, $\log g$, $\log L$, the surface abundances of lithium and carbon, and the predicted space densities agree well with the observed distributions of these parameters for Li-rich and early-R stars in the Galaxy.

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Ages and Masses of 0.64 million Red Giant Branch stars from the LAMOST Galactic Spectroscopic Survey

We present a catalog of stellar age and mass estimates for a sample of 640\,986 red giant branch (RGB) stars of the Galactic disk from the LAMOST Galactic Spectroscopic Survey (DR4). The RGB stars are distinguished from the red clump stars utilizing period spacing derived from the spectra with a machine learning method based on kernel principal component analysis (KPCA). Cross-validation suggests our method is capable of distinguishing RC from RGB stars with only 2 per cent contamination rate for stars with signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) higher than 50. The age and mass of these RGB stars are determined from their LAMOST spectra with KPCA method by taking the LAMOST - $Kepler$ giant stars having asteroseismic parameters and the LAMOST-TGAS sub-giant stars based on isochrones as training sets. Examinations suggest that the age and mass estimates of our RGB sample stars with SNR $>$ 30 have a median error of 30 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively. Stellar ages are found to exhibit positive vertical and negative radial gradients across the disk, and the age structure of the disk is strongly flared across the whole disk of $6<R<13$\,kpc. The data set demonstrates good correlations among stellar age, [Fe/H] and [$α$/Fe]. There are two separate sequences in the [Fe/H] -- [$α$/Fe] plane: a high--$α$ sequence with stars older than $\sim$\,8\,Gyr and a low--$α$ sequence composed of stars with ages covering the whole range of possible ages of stars. We also examine relations between age and kinematic parameters derived from the Gaia DR2 parallax and proper motions. Both the median value and dispersion of the orbital eccentricity are found to increase with age. The vertical angular momentum is found to fairly smoothly decrease with age from 2 to 12\,Gyr, with a rate of about $-$50\,kpc\,km\,s$^{-1}$\,Gyr$^{-1}$. A full table of the catalog is public available online.

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Observations of SN 2017ein Reveal Shock Breakout Emission and A Massive Progenitor Star for a Type Ic Supernova

We present optical and ultraviolet observations of nearby type Ic supernova SN 2017ein as well as detailed analysis of its progenitor properties from both the early-time observations and the prediscovery Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images. The optical light curves started from within one day to $\sim$275 days after explosion, and optical spectra range from $\sim$2 days to $\sim$90 days after explosion. Compared to other normal SNe Ic like SN 2007gr and SN 2013ge, \mbox{SN 2017ein} seems to have more prominent C{\footnotesize II} absorption and higher expansion velocities in early phases, suggestive of relatively lower ejecta mass. The earliest photometry obtained for \mbox{SN 2017ein} show indications of shock cooling. The best-fit obtained by including a shock cooling component gives an estimate of the envelope mass as $\sim$0.02 M$_{\odot}$ and stellar radius as 8$\pm$4 R$_{\odot}$. Examining the pre-explosion images taken with the HST WFPC2, we find that the SN position coincides with a luminous and blue point-like source, with an extinction-corrected absolute magnitude of M$_V$$\sim$$-$8.2 mag and M$_I$$\sim$$-$7.7 mag.Comparisons of the observations to the theoretical models indicate that the counterpart source was either a single WR star or a binary with whose members had high initial masses, or a young compact star cluster. To further distinguish between different scenarios requires revisiting the site of the progenitor with HST after the SN fades away.

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Binary Star Fractions from the LAMOST DR4

Stellar systems composed of single, double, triple or high-order systems are rightfully regarded as the fundamental building blocks of the Milky Way. Binary stars play an important role in formation and evolution of the Galaxy. Through comparing the radial velocity variations from multi-epoch observations, we analyze the binary fraction of dwarf stars observed with the LAMOST. Effects of different model assumptions such as orbital period distributions on the estimate of binary fractions, are investigated. The results based on log-normal distribution of orbital periods reproduce the previous complete analyses better than the power-law distribution. We find that the binary fraction increases with $T_{\rm eff}$ and decreases with [Fe/H]. We first investigate the relation between $α$-elements and binary fraction in such a large sample as the LAMOST. The old stars with high [$α$/Fe] dominate higher binary fraction than young stars with low [$α$/Fe]. At the same mass, former forming stars possess a higher binary fraction than newly forming ones, which may be related with the evolution of the Galaxy.

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The double helium-white dwarf channel for the formation of AM CVn binaries

Most close double helium white dwarfs will merge within a Hubble time due to orbital decay by gravitational-wave radiation. However, a significant fraction with low mass ratios will survive for a long time as a consequence of stable mass transfer. Such stable mass transfer between two helium white dwarfs (HeWD) provides one channel for the production of AM\,CVn binary stars. In previous calculations of double HeWD progenitors, the accreting HeWD was treated as a point mass. We have computed the evolution of 16 double HeWD models in order to investigate the consequences of treating the detailed evolution of both components. We find that the boundary between binaries having stable and unstable mass transfer is slightly modified by this approach. By comparing with observed periods and mass ratios, we redetermine masses of eight known AM\,CVn stars by our double HeWDs channel, i.e. HM\,Cnc, AM CVn, V406\,Hya, J0926, J1240, GP\,Com, Gaia14aae and V396\,Hya. We propose that central spikes in the triple-peaked emission spectra of J1240, GP\,Com and V396\,Hya and the surface abundance ratios of N/C/O in GP\,Com can be explained by the stable double HeWD channel. The mass estimates derived from our calculations are used to discuss the predicted gravitational wave signal in the context of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA).

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Mass and Age of Red Giant Branch Stars Observed with LAMOST and \emph{Kepler}

Obtaining accurate and precise masses and ages for large numbers of giant stars is of great importance for unraveling the assemblage history of the Galaxy. In this paper, we estimate masses and ages of 6940 red giant branch (RGB) stars with asteroseismic parameters deduced from \emph{Kepler} photometry and stellar atmospheric parameters derived from LAMOST spectra. The typical uncertainties of mass is a few per cent, and that of age is $\sim$\,20 per cent. The sample stars reveal two separate sequences in the age -- [$α$/Fe] relation -- a high--$α$ sequence with stars older than $\sim$\,8\,Gyr and a low--$α$ sequence composed of stars with ages ranging from younger than 1\,Gyr to older than 11\,Gyr. We further investigate the feasibility of deducing ages and masses directly from LAMOST spectra with a machine learning method based on kernel based principal component analysis, taking a sub-sample of these RGB stars as a training data set. We demonstrate that ages thus derived achieve an accuracy of $\sim$\,24 per cent. We also explored the feasibility of estimating ages and masses based on the spectroscopically measured carbon and nitrogen abundances. The results are quite satisfactory and significantly improved compared to the previous studies.

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