Theoretical Aspects of the Rapidly Oscillating AP Stars

Abstract

Until the rapid oscillations in Przybylski’s star, HD 101065, were discovered by Kurtz in 1978, chemical peculiarity and pulsation were thought to be mutually exclusive. Though the location of the Ap stars in the HR diagram overlaps with that of the Delta Scuti stars, no Ap stars were known to pulsate, and the Delta Scuti type pulsating stars, with a few exceptions, were not claimed to reveal chemical peculiarity. The striking impact of the discovery of the rapid oscillations of Ap stars is that the basic conception of the exclusiveness of the chemical peculiarity and the pulsation was broken. So far, twenty-nine Ap stars have been discovered to be rapidly oscillating Ap (roAp) stars (Kurtz 1997). The observed pulsations of Ap stars are, however, different from those of the Delta Scuti stars in various aspects. The pulsation periods of roAp stars are typically 10.minutes and are much shorter than those of the Delta Scuti stars, which are typically 2 hrs. In some cases, the amplitudes are modulated with the same period and phase as the magnetic strength variation. The amplitudes of some of the roAp stars are very stable, while some others show a fairly short-term variation of a time scale of a day. Some of the roAp stars show a long-term variation of the frequency with a time scale of years.