Enhanced Extra Mixing in Low‐Mass Red Giants: Lithium Production and Thermal Stability

Abstract

We show that canonical extra mixing with a diffusion coefficient Dmix ≈ 109 cm2 s-1, which is thought to start working in the majority of low-mass stars when they reach the bump luminosities on the red giant branch (RGB), cannot lead to an Li flash or a thermal instability, as has been proposed. The abundance levels of 7Li measured in the most extreme Li-rich giants can be reproduced with models including enhanced extra mixing with a diffusion coefficient Dmix ≈ 1011 cm2 s-1. We propose that if extra mixing in RGB stars is driven by rotation, then enhanced extra mixing and Li enrichment in some of these stars can be triggered by their spinning up by an external source of angular momentum. As plausible mechanisms of the spinning up, we consider tidal synchronization of a red giant's spin and orbital rotation in a close binary system and engulfment of a massive planet. The most convincing theoretical argument in favor of our hypothesis is a finding that a 10-fold increase of the spin angular velocity of a solar metallicity upper RGB star results in appropriate changes of both extra-mixing depth and rate, exactly as required for efficient Li production. We regard the existence of binary and single RGB stars with rotational velocities approaching ~10% of their equatorial Keplerian velocities, as well as the much larger proportion of Li-rich giants (~50%) among rapidly rotating objects, as the observational support for our hypothesis.