Asteroseismology of Main-sequence Stars: Convection and Overshooting, Diffusion and Extra-mixing

Abstract

Asteroseismology is a powerful tool to derive information about the internal structure of stars. It also represents an important complement to the more traditional techniques used to derive the stellar parameters. It is possible that two stars with similar outer parameters (effective temperatures, luminosities, metallicities) have different past histories and are different in their internal layers. Asteroseismology is the only observational technique able to distinguish between such stars. These differences may be due to “non‐standard” internal processes like diffusion, mixing, mass loss and accretion. Here the interplay between such processes and stellar oscillations is first reviewed. Then some examples are given of cases for which asteroseismology is able to derive the location of internal boundaries: bottom of convective zones, convective cores and places of rapid chemical variations. This is the beginning of a new emerging science which will be developing in the near future.