The influences of convective overshooting and semiconvection on the chemical evolution of massive stars

Abstract

In massive stars, convection in the interior is different from that of intermediate and small mass stars. In the main-sequence phase of small mass stars, there is a convective core and a radiative envelope, between which are the radiative intermediate layers with uneven chemical abundances. Semiconvection would occur in the intermediate layers between the convective core and the homogeneous envelope in massive stars. We treat core convective overshooting and semiconvection together as a process. We found that when decreasing overshooting, the semiconvection is more pronounced. In these two processes, we introduce one diffusive parameter D, which is different from other authors who have introduced different parameters for these two zones. The influences of the turbulent diffusion process on chemical evolution and other quantities of the stellar structure are shown in the present paper.