Astron. Astrophys.

334, 901910 (1998)

ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS

The solar neighbourhood HR diagram as a quantitative test for evolutionary time scales
K.-P. Schr oder
Institut f ur Astronomie und Astrophysik der Technischen Universit at Berlin, Hardenbergstr. 36 (PN 8-1), D-10623 Berlin, Germany Received 19 November 1997 / Accepted 9 March 1998

Abstract. The HIPPARCOS parallaxes have provided us with a precise HR diagram (HRD) of the solar neighbourhood, complete within certain limits. The scope of this work is a study of the stellar population densities in characteristic regions of the HRD to test stellar evolutionary time scales. We examine two HRDs (Mv 4.0), both based on the single-star entries of the HIPPARCOS catalogue. One is constrained by distance d 50pc (1337 stars found) and the other by d 100pc (8984 stars found but more scattered). The stellar distribution on the main sequence (MS) was used to nd the best matching present day mass function (PDMF) for 1.15 < M /M < 10 in synthetic HRDs. For 1.6 < M /M < 4 we derive an initial mass function (IMF) of 1.8 dNIMF /d log M M . We then compare 4 synthetic HRDs, each based on a grid of evolutionary tracks with a different description of extended mixing (or overshooting), to the HIPPARCOS HRDs. As a diagnostic tool, we take star counts from characteristic HRD regions: the Hertzsprung gap (HG), the lower giant branch (LGB), the K giant clump (KGC) and the cool wind region (CW). The HG region turns out to be very sensitive to overshooting on the MS for models with 1.6M . We nd that those 2 grids, which include the same overshooting as derived from earlier empirical tests, but with an onset (either gradual or sudden) around 1.7M , reproduce all star counts best. Finally, our computed HRD can quantify a giant mass distribution for any evolved stage. Potential applications include the evolution of late stellar activity, or an estimate of the stellar gas and dust injection rates for the chemical evolution of the Galaxy. Key words: stars: evolution stars: HR diagram stars: interiors stars: mass function Galaxy: solar neighbourhood Galaxy: stellar content

1. Introduction It is well known how much stellar evolutionary theory has learnt from the HRDs of clusters so far much more than from the stars
Send offprint requests to: K.-P. Schr oder, (schroder@weizen.physik.tu-berlin.de)

of the solar neighbourhood. Partly, the explanation lies with the special kind of sample stars all of (about) the same age which only clusters can provide. However, another reason is simply technical: before HIPPARCOS, only the very nearest stars had precise enough parallaxes to qualify for a well-dened HRD. Therefore, rarer and interesting types of stars like luminous latetype giants, e.g., mostly remained out of reach. Now that the HIPPARCOS mission and catalogue has been completed, precise absolute magnitudes have become available for thousands of stars, some of which even form a volumelimited complete sample. Therefore, the resulting new solar neighbourhood (single stars) HRD can compete with the best cluster HRDs in terms of precise positions. Moreover, it includes large numbers of stars of a whole range of ages. That has made it a different and interesting kind of high quality sample. Its potential goes far beyond quantitative comparisons of evolutionary models with many individual stars the solar neighbourhood HRD now qualies for statistical tests as well. This includes a check of the mass function for the stars within 50 to 100 pc. Important for evolutionary theory, however, is another new option: to study various evolutionary time scales, including some briefer stages. So far, evolutionary theory has mainly been tested by a comparison of isochrones with cluster HRDs (e.g., Meynet et al. 1993, Pols et al. 1998), or comparing evolutionary tracks with precise binary data (e.g., Andersen 1991, Schr oder et al. 1997, Pols et al. 1997) or with log g and Te from model atmospheres of bright main sequence (MS) stars in clusters (Sch onberner & Harmanec 1995). The main purpose of all those tests has been an empirical quantication of effects from convective mixing in the H-burning cores of MS stars. In most codes, this is still approximated by a simple mixing length approach. As a consequence, extended mixing (i.e., beyond the Schwarzschild instability), often called overshooting, had to be introduced in an ad hoc way and requires an empirical quantication, which is usually given in terms of an overshoot length lov . Also, more empirical tests are needed to determine, what is the lowest mass of a MS stellar model for which overshooting is required. The onset of overshooting on the MS might tell us something about the nature of that extended mixing. Is it strictly coupled to the onset of core convection, which takes place in ZAMS stars of about 1.1M ? Or is it coupled to (core) rotation (Flieger &

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K.-P. Schr oder: The solar neighbourhood HR diagram as a quantitative test for evolutionary time scales

Langer 1995, Talon et al. 1997)? Or is it mainly an overshooting (literally) of convective elements into the convectively stable regions? In the last case, a marginally convective core might not be sufcient and a threshold convection (and MS stellar mass) has therefore been suggested and discussed by several authors, from both an empirical and a theoretical point of view (e.g., Roxburg 1992, Alongi et al. 1993, Umezu 1995). Previous evidence for overshooting has mostly been gathered from the width of the MS. However, the signicance of this approach diminishes towards the suspected onset of overshooting. Cluster and binary data suggest an onset somewhere between 1.1 to 2M (e.g., Meynet et al. 1993, Pols et al. 1998). An overview of other than MS-related effects of overshooting and a new sensitive test was published by Schr oder & Eggleton 1996. They employed the luminosity of the He-core burning phase, using giants in well-studied binaries, i.e., Aur systems. However, suitable binary candidates for that approach are presently restricted to stellar masses of more than 2.5 M . That leaves a gap of sensitive tests just in the critical mass range (1.1 to about 2M ), which contains a large fraction of stars and late-type giants (see Sect. 4.3). With this work, we want to demonstrate that the use of stellar population densities in various characteristic regions of the local HRD can sensitively test evolutionary time scales and also complements existing tests of stellar evolution. In particular, the number of stars counted in the Hertzsprung gap (HG) and to some extent also the giant branch (GB) and K giant clump (KGC) is a sensitive indicator of overshooting in the critical mass range around 1.6M . The lifetime of those H-shell burning phases depends strongly on the mass of the He-core, which would be larger if overshooting took place during the preceding H-core burning MS phase. 2. The solar neighbourhood single-star HRD Completeness of the stellar sample, from which the solar neighbourhood HRD is constructed, is most important for any statistical approach. Hence, for any given volume, the minimum usable luminosity is dened by the magnitude down to which the observational sample is complete. HIPPARCOS coverage is anticipated to be fairly complete down to the sensitivity threshold of its starmapper detectors, which is about 9m (van Leeuven et al. 1992, Kovalevsky et al. 1995). For d = 100pc, that would correspond to Mv = 4.0. For an HRD of stars within d = 50pc, completeness should consequently be expected further down, to about Mv = 5.5. Hence, a comparison of the star counts between two samples and in different luminosity ranges is a good test of completeness, especially for the low luminosity end of the 100 pc HRD. It is also a good test, whether the stars are distributed evenly in space: Strikt homogeneity would yield a factor of 8 for all star counts. Any uniform ratio of respective star counts in so different volumes however is proof that neither HRD is dominated by specic local structure or star-burst events but is quite representative of the average galactic disk population. This point is of special relevance, when modelling the solar neighbourhood

HRD with the simplication of a strictly random stellar age distribution. Within statistical uctuations, a uniform ratio of 7 is found between the respective star counts in all HRD regions with Mv < 3.5, except for the small number of higher mass MS stars (see Sect. 3.3). Here, the global galactic structure (the disk geometry) becomes evident: the nite scale height obviously reduces the stellar density in the polar regions of the 100 pc volume. Between Mv = 3.5 and 4, which includes stars within half a magnitude from the expected threshold, the 100 pc HRD appears to be incomplete by 10%: the respective star counts yield only a factor of 6.3. We therefore restricted the subsequent work to HRD regions with Mv brighter than 3.5. Quality, i.e., the quality of the HRD positions, is the other important factor to consider here. The distances obtained from the HIPPARCOS catalogue have very non-uniform errors, depending on the already non-uniform parallax errors and increasing with the distance itself. The resulting error distribution function has the form of a main body of small errors plus two long tails of large errors. Since large errors in parallax result in an asymmetric error distribution in distance d, more stars are displaced to lower luminosities (smaller distances) than vice versa, i.e., there are many stars which in reality are from outside the sample volume. At d = 100pc, displacements in Mv may reach 0.4m in extreme cases (standard deviation ( ) = 15 to 20mas), while for most stars Mv is known to within 0.2m . Sampling by a minimum quality parallax provides no improvement (rather the contrary), since it would introduce unwanted, non-uniform deviations from completeness in such a HRD. Equally, the B-V colours become distorted in an asymmetric way: reddening becomes noticeable with larger distances, and photometry tends to be a bit less precise as well. However, we estimate both effects to be only of the order of 0.04m , each. Another source of confusion is non-resolved binaries of comparable brightness (including differences of up to an order of magnitude) which would occupy a false HRD position according to their composite colour and combined luminosity. We therefore removed all entries of spatially resolved binaries, which seem to cover already a large fraction of all binaries in the d < 50pc sample. Of the remaining spectroscopic binaries, pairs with a cool giant and an early MS star would be the most obvious cases: they would falsly ll up the otherwise lowly populated Hertzsprung gap of the resulting HRD, therefore providing a worst-case test. The other HRD regions, however, are not over-proportionally lled in by binaries. A check of the Herzsprung gap in the 50 pc HRD lead to the removal of two stars with Mv < 2, which were listed as spectroscopic binaries in the Bright Star Catalogue (BSC). Among 27 stars checked in the lower gap (i.e., HRD region HG in Table 1), three more binaries were found in the BSC and removed from the sample. In the 100 pc sample, 22 spectroscopic binaries were found among 48 checked gap stars (Mv < 2), using the same criteria. Apart from the 7-times larger star counts, a larger fraction of spectroscopic binaries can indeed be expected there because fewer binaries are resolved spatially at larger dis-

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tances. Stars in the lower Herzsprung gap of the 100 pc HRD are mostly not covered by the BSC and no further spectroscopic binaries were found. However, a few unknown binaries can be expected there. Altogether, we count 1337 single stars in the solar neighbourhood for d < 50pc and 8984 for d < 100pc, for Mv < 4.0. Visual inspection of the respective HRDs (Fig. 1 and Fig. 3) shows that well-dened features, such as the the zero age MS or the K giant clump (around Mv = 0.7, B-V = 1.0), are more smeared out in the 100 pc HRD. Obviously, its interpretation is more ambiguous despite the 7 times larger star counts it provides. The situation is different, however, with the cool wind (B-V > 1.4) giants and the luminous blue loop giants. Both these giant groups cover larger areas of the HRD and therefore do not get so much confused with other, displaced stars. Since their numbers are too small in the 50 pc HRD, we here expect a denite advantage for the 100 pc HRD. In this way, both HRDs are nicely complementary in an analysis of evolved stellar population densities and we use both as reference samples for our computed HRDs (see Sect. 4.1 and Table 1). 3. Computation of realistic, synthetic HRDs To study the effect of overshooting on evolutionary time scales, we rst compute synthetic HRDs based on grids of evolutionary tracks, which differ in their description of overshooting. Then, we dene characteristic regions of the HRD, where star counts represent certain evolutionary lifetimes and calibrate a realistic mass function. 3.1. Four different grids of evolutionary tracks Stellar models and evolutionary tracks have been computed by the fast evolutionary code of P.P. Eggleton and colleagues in its most up-to-date version, which can be characterized as follows: It uses a self-adapting mesh; structure and composition are solved simultaneously (Eggleton 1971, 1973). Convective mixing and semiconvection are treated as a diffusion process with a diffusion constant adopted as a function of rad ad , while standard mixing-length theory is used to describe the heat transport (Eggleton 1972). Opacities have been taken from OPAL (Rogers & Iglesias 1992), complemented at lower temperatures (T 104 K) by opacities from Alexander & Ferguson (1994). Nuclear rates, neutrino losses and the equation of state have also been updated (see Pols et al. 1995 and more references therein). Furthermore, extended mixing in the cores is not prescribed by an overshooting length which is a xed fraction of HP (the HP prescription). Instead, the code uses a ov prescription for the stability criterion itself: extended mixing occurs in a region with r > a , at all convective stability boundaries of most signicance with H-burning cores, but also including Heburning cores. We dene as the product of a specied constant ov , our overshooting parameter, and a conveniently chosen factor which depends only on the ratio of radiation pressure to gas

pressure: = ov /(2.5 + 20 + 16 2 ). A convenience of the ov prescription is its capability to produce realistic models over a large mass range without parameter changes (see below). The two convection parameters ( = mixing length over pressure scale height, and ov ) have been empirically calibrated in such a way that the resulting evolutionary tracks are precisely consistent with, e.g., well-studied eclipsing binaries (Pols et al. 1997). Very stringent constraints on ov were derived by Schr oder & Eggleton (1996) and Schr oder et al. (1997), who used Aur and other well studied binaries which contain a Heburning giant primary. It was found that ov = 0.12 gives the best match for the whole accessible range of 2.5 < M /M < 6.5. That corresponds to an overshoot length which increases slightly with mass, from 0.24 to 0.32 pressure scale heights. For smaller masses, evidence for overshooting is less stringent; it appears to diminish for stars with M < 2M see Pols et al. (1998), who compare the shape of cluster MSs to overshooting and non-overshooting isochrones computed with the Eggleton code. Finally, we dene 4 grids of evolutionary tracks, which differ in their description of overshooting and in which stellar masses differ by about a factor of 1.1: Grid 1 is computed without any overshooting (ov = 0.0 for all stellar masses). Grid 2 uses ov = 0.12 for all stellar masses, i.e., it exoder et al. trapolates the empirical calibration of ov by Schr (1997) well below 2 M . Grid 3 is a hybrid grid which incorporates a relatively gradual onset of overshooting: the tracks are computed with ov = 0.0 at M = 1.6M , 0.12 for M 2.5M , and 0.06 inbetween. Grid 4 is a hybrid grid much like grid 3, but with a sudden onset of overshooting: ov = 0.0 for M 1.6M , 0.12 for M 2.0M , and 0.06 at M = 1.8M . All our 4 alternative grids have the same (nearly solar) chemical composition: X = 0.70, Y = 0.28, Z = 0.02. In reality, some younger stars may have a somewhat higher metallicity, some low-mass giants a somewhat lower. Such abundance variation can well explain the larger spread in the observed HRD, especially in B-V, when compared with that of our models, which take only observational errors into account. We also experimented with a fth grid with a gradual onset of overshooting at lower stellar masses: ov = 0.0 for M = 1.25M , ov = 0.03 for 1.4 and 1.6 M , and otherwise as grid 3. Our computations show that already such a small amount of extended mixing yields a signicantly too small number of HG stars with masses around 1.6 M , which seems to restrict the onset of overshooting to masses around 1.7 M . In the following, we focus on the 4 grids dened above. 3.2. Characteristic HRD regions The various evolved stellar stages can be well characterised by 4 different regions in the HRD. Star counts taken in those

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K.-P. Schr oder: The solar neighbourhood HR diagram as a quantitative test for evolutionary time scales

Fig. 1. The solar neighbourhood HRD for d < 50pc, as observed by HIPPARCOS

Fig. 2. Computer simulation of the solar neighbourhood HRD for d < 50pc, based on grid 3, with 1340 stars of random age with 1.15 < M < 10M . Compare to Fig. 1.

regions are representative of the respective evolutionary time scales. In particular, we focus on the following regions (the exact borderlines are dened below, in Table 1): The HG (Hertzsprung gap), which characterises the onset of H-shell burning and in which the evolutionary speed depends strongly on the mass of the He core, which in turn depends on stellar mass and any core overshooting during the preceding H burning. For M 1.8M , stars are sufciently frequent to strongly constrain overshooting by their counts, to ov < 0.03. There is no other such sensitive test. Any overshooting effects on the shape of isochrones or evolutionary tracks are almost insignicant at such low masses. The LGB (lower giant branch), which is characteristic of the further stages of H-shell burning and subsequent He-

core growth. Since the evolutionary speed is slower with lower mass giants, these are most abundant in that region. In order to reproduce their counts, there must be a strong decline among giants with initial masses between 1 and 1.25 solar masses (i.e. with ages between 5 and 12 billion years). The KGC (K giant clump), which primarily contains those He-core burning stars which went through a He ash. Degeneracy of the He core on the GB and the He ash are avoided with initial masses larger than 2.0 M (if ov = 0.12), or 2.4 M (if there is no overshooting). Stars up to about 2.6 M spend their He-core burning time mostly in this same region but altogether are only a minority (under 20% as computed with the hybrid grids 3 and 4). The cool giants, which are found on the AGB and the upper GB beyond B-V = 1.4. They are of particular interest be-

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Fig. 3. The solar neighbourhood HRD for d < 100pc, as observed by HIPPARCOS

Fig. 4. Same as Fig. 2 but for d < 100pc, with 9000 stars and a larger error distribution. Compare to Fig. 3.

cause of their cool winds (CW), through which they inject a lot of gas and dust into the galactic interstellar medium. Their internal structure is described by one (GB) or two (AGB) advanced burning shells.

3.3. Matching the PDMF The synthetic HRD were computed supposing a constant star formation rate and a time independent IMF, in agreement with the conclusions of Miller & Scalo (1979) and Scalo (1986). Under such uncomplicated conditions, the presently observed mass distribution, the PDMF, is simply IMF (M ). It is seen to decrease much more steeply towards larger masses than the IMF because the more massive stars have so much shorter lifetimes (M ). Since the PDMF can be checked sensitively by the stellar distribution on the MS, we start with dening a suitable PDMF. Our PDMF distributes a given number of stars over a suitable interval of stellar masses and is basically of the form , but with three adjustable paramdNPDMF /d log M M

The use of characteristic HRD regions as dened above has the additional advantage of their star counts being insensitive (because of their considerable size) to small displacements in luminosity and colour i.e., through mismatched observational errors (see below) or with stars of other than solar abundances or with a fainter, undetected companion.

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K.-P. Schr oder: The solar neighbourhood HR diagram as a quantitative test for evolutionary time scales

eters. These allow adjustment for two different exponents and a mass at which changes. Each of the stars is then given a random age between 0 and its maximum lifetime. Depending on its mass and age, each computed star is then placed on its evolutionary track. For that operation, our code interpolates between the tracks of one of the four grids dened above. In order to nd the matching PDMF, we dened 6 MS regions in the HRD with different sizes so as to obtain large enough star counts, while covering the MS from Mv = 3.5 upwards: Mv < 0.0, 0.0 <Mv < 1.0, 1.0 <Mv < 2.0, 2.0 <Mv < 2.5, 2.5 <Mv < 3.0 and 3.0 <Mv < 3.5. Each interval in B-V accommodates the full MS width. At rst we tried a PDMF with a slope chosen to match the empirical PDMF of Miller & Scalo (1979). However, the MS star counts it yields show systematic deviations from the observed MS star counts. We then optimized the PDMF for each grid by variation and verication, until the computed MS star counts would match almost within the statistical uctuation (i.e. i = O( N i )). For all grids, the best matching PDMF requires a change of the exponent around a stellar mass of 1.55 M . For M > 1.55M , the decline of the best matching PDMF is very steep: = 4.4 is required for grids 2 to 4, and = 4.0 for grid 1 (d < 50pc), within an estimated range of 0.2. This PDMF is somewhat steeper than that given by Miller & Scalo (1979) for M > 1.8M . Within d = 100pc, which includes more volume farther away from the galactic plane, we nd an even steeper decline of the PDMF, or a relative deciency of massive stars: = 5.1 for grids 2 to 4, and = 4.7 for grid 1. Only about 1% of the sample stars are involved here, but the difference is statistically signicant and appears to be of a galactic origin such massive, young stars are known to be more concentrated towards the galactic plane. For M < 1.55M , = 2.0 is required with grids 3 and 4, and = 2.4 and 2.6 with grids 1 and 2, respectively (d < 50pc). For d < 100pc, = 1.8 (grids 3,4), 2.2 (grid 1) and 2.6 (grid 2). Because the mass range in question is small and near the Mv -limit of completeness, these values for should not be interpreted physically. Finally, a suitable stellar mass interval has to be chosen. The upper limit is not critical and we have set it to 10M , above which the PDMF yields much less than 1 star, even within 100 pc. The lower mass limit is critical, however, since it cuts into large PDMF values and thus demands further thought: MS stars with M < 1.25M fall below the minimum luminosity for completeness (Mv = 3.5), but their evolved counterparts would gain luminosity and then contribute to the LGB, GB, KGC and AGB. On the other hand, low mass giants signicantly older than the Sun may well be depleted by diffusion from the galactic disk into the halo. We therefore expect a signicant drop of contributions to the LGB, GB and AGB between giants of 1.25 M (solar age) and 1.0 M (galactic age). We have chosen 1.15M as a representative mean lower mass limit (corresponding to an upper age limit of 8 109 yrs). A good test for the choice of the above boundary condition is provided by the population density on the lower GB (LGB,

i.e., below the KGC). The contribution of low mass giants is larger there than in any other part of the HRD and can in fact be matched very well with our choice of lower mass limit (see Sect. 4.1). 3.4. Simulation of an observed HRD A critical step is the conversion of the theoretical HRD quantities Te and logL into the classical observed quantities B-V and Mv . We used the colour (and bolometric correction) tables computed by Kurucz (1991) for solar abundances. These agree fairly well with the colours of the few K and M-type giants, for which empirical values of Te exist (as from Di Benedetto, 1993), within the uncertainties of their derived log g values. We estimate those conversion-related uncertainties in B-V and Mv to be about 0.05 in most cases, but increasing to about 0.1 towards the red end. Another critical point is the spreading-out of certain features (like the KGC) in the observed HRD because of the errors in the stellar colours and, especially, the parallax measurements. As discussed in Sect. 2, such errors are non-symmetrical and their distribution is non-gaussian. Our error distribution model displaces the stars in a given error range in a manner which is asymmetric for the larger sample. Guided by the visual appearence of well dened features in the observed HRDs (e.g., ZAMS and KGC), we set the error ranges to -0.06/+0.06 in B-V, -0.2/+0.2 in Mv for d < 50pc, and to -0.08/+0.12 (B-V), 0.3/+0.4 (Mv ) for d < 100pc. A distribution of random numbers taken to the third power is used to simulate the error distribution in those intervals. It yields 50% of all synthetic stars being in the inner 1/8 fraction of the given error range, while only 20.6% of the stars are displaced by more than half the maximum error. That approach appears to be fully adequate for the HRD of the solar neighbourhood within 50 pc. Fig. 2 shows a model of that HRD and it compares well with Fig. 1. With the 100 pc HRD, however, we nd that the choice of error distribution has an effect on the star counts in the above dened regions, because the error ranges are already quite large that degrades the information content anyway. Hence, the interpretation of the larger sample must remain ambiguous to some extent. See Fig. 4 for a matching model, to compare with Fig. 3. 4. Results 4.1. Evolved star counts: theory versus observation Characteristic star counts can now be computed from our synthetic HRDs and compared with those of the HIPPARCOS HRDs. They are listed in Table 1, matching entries being emphasized. Table 1 also species, how the characteristic region borderlines are dened in the HRD. The choices of border lines are a compromise between the need to include all relevant stars from the evolutionary stage, and minimum confusion with stars that would, in the absence of observational errors, populate adjacent HRD areas. That has to be considered for the computed and observed HRDs at the same time.

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Fig. 5. Same as Fig. 2, but based on grid 1 (no overshooting). Some of the region boundaries (see Table 1) are indicated.

Fig. 6. Same as Fig. 2, but based on grid 2 (overshooting for all stars). Note the signicantly lower population density in the Hertzsprung gap when compared to Figs. 5, 2 and 1.

In order to assess the stochastic count variation of the synthetic HRDs, star counts have each been averaged from 10 (stochastically different) synthetic samples. There is a remarkable agreement of both hybrid grids (no. 3 and 4, marginally less good for grid 3) with observed counts, while there are some signicant differences found with grids 1 and 2, i.e., larger than a statistical uctuation N i ). The different stellar frequency in the HG is already noticeable by visual inspection of Figs. 2, 5 and 6, which have been computed on the basis of grids 3, 1 and 2, respectively. When respective results for the 50 pc and 100 pc HRDs are compared, it becomes obvious (except for the low number of CW giants) that excellent agreement with theoretical star counts (grids 3, 4) is only achieved for the 50 pc HRD. As mentioned before, it is much more delicate to model the deviations of stars

in the 100 pc HRD (shown in Fig. 4, computed on the basis of grid 3). That, in addition to a larger contamination by spectroscopic binaries (see Sect. 2), should explain why its numbers of observed HG and LGB stars are somewhat larger than computed. With the KGC, a larger choice of region, to account for the larger scatter, solved all the problems related to the less good data quality. The 7-times larger star counts of the 100 pc HRD become an advantage with the few very late type giants in the CW region. It becomes clear that grids 3 and 4 do yield reasonably good numbers here as well: i = O( N i ), which is 13% with the 100 pc HRD but as much as 35% with the 50 pc HRD. Another group of rare stars, for which the larger sample of the 100 pc HRD is of advantage, are the more luminous blue loop (He-core burning) giants, i.e., with Mv < 0.5 and M > 3M . Here, the comparison between Figs. 3 and 4 re-

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Table 1. Characteristic regions and star counts of evolved stars in the HRD: Hertzsprung gap (HG), lower giant branch (LGB), K giant clump (KGC) and cool wind region (CW). regions: B-V Mv counts: HRD(50pc) HRD(grid 1) HRD(grid 2) HRD(grid 3) HRD(grid 4) HRD(100pc) HRD(grid 1) HRD(grid 2) HRD(grid 3) HRD(grid 4)

HG 0.75-0.9 3.5-1.2

LGB 0.9-1.3 2.5-1.5

KGC 0.9-1.2 (0.85 1.3 ) 1.2-0.2 (1.5 0.0 ) 70 81 71 67 70 551 662 567 551 555

CW > 1.4 < 1.0

24 28 12 28 27 200 187 91 174 176

27 27 20 26 26 212 195 143 175 175

5 10 8 9 8 57 79 63 63 62

Fig. 7. Initial mass distribution for the K clump giants of a sample of 13000 stars (M > 1.15M ) with a solar neighbourhood PDMF.

) larger region required for HRD(100pc) to account for larger scatter

veals a problem with the stellar models when taking into account the amount of overshooting required to match observed cluster isochrones and evolved eclipsing binaries: they yield about the right number of He-core burning (blue loop) giants, but these are less hot than the majority of their observed counterparts. The same discrepancy occurs with evolutionary tracks from other codes (and similar parameterization, see, e.g., Schaller et al. 1992). The reduced effective blue loop temperature stems from the changes which overshooting (during H-core burning) brings to the hydrogen prole around the core, as already pointed out by Weigert (1975). Lower metallicities would give hotter blue loops, but for a majority of those stars this is rather unlikely because they are much younger than the sun (M > 3M ). The temperature to colour conversion, on the other hand, appears to be reliable within 0.05m for B-V in this temperature range. Hence, there could be a more general problem with the codes it might be related to the approximate treatment of mixing. 4.2. A by-product: the IMF Although this is not our main intention, our approach leads to an approximate IMF for single stars in the solar neighbourhood at least for masses from about 1.6 to 4 M , where the empirically derived PDMF is well dened (see Sect. 3.3) and the assumption of a time-independent stellar birth-rate and IMF seems to be good enough. For larger masses, the number of stars in the solar neighbourhood becomes insufcient to dene the PDMF. For lower masses, this simple aproach becomes inadequate: Diffusion away from the galactic disk during the longer lifetimes becomes involved, as well as, among other possible complications, a probably different stellar birthrate in the earlier history of the galactic disk and the non-completeness of the stellar sample on the lower MS.

Fig. 8. Initial mass distribution for GB stars with B-V > 1.4, from the same sample as for Fig. 7.

For the assumed, strictly random age distribution, the IMF is simply proportional to the PDMF devided by the lifetimes (M ). With the hybrid grids and for the solar neighbour2.6 (roughly, for hood within 50 pc, we nd (M ) M 4.4 (Sect. 3.3), which 1.6 < M /M < 4) and PDMF M 1.8 . The estimated yields an IMF = dNIMF /d log M M uncertainty of the exponent is 0.2 to 0.3, mainly related to some ambiguity in the choice of a well matching PDMF. Our IMF is close to the one suggested by Scalo (1986) for M 1M , i.e., 1.7 . dNIMF /d log M M The total, time-independent stellar birth-rate, (PDMF/ (M ) d log M , is strongly dominated by stars with less than 1.6M and can therfore not be discussed here. For M > 1.6M , we count 417 stars in our synthetic HRD (Fig. 2), and a local birth-rate of 1 such star (within d < 50pc) per 6 Gyrs is required.

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Fig. 9. Initial mass distribution for AGB stars with B-V > 1.4, otherwise same as Fig. 8.

4.3. Properties of different evolved stages We have shown that with grids 3 and 4 realistic star counts can be computed for all HRD regions, which are characteristic of the main evolved stellar stages provided that the best matching PDMF and the right evolutionary history (i.e. overshooting) come together. Thus, observation can test and verify our synthetic HRD on the basis of characteristic star counts. Once this has been done, it is interesting to look at the theoretical results in more detail. We can use them as a statistical approach to give the theoretical mass distribution, or a distribution of any structural properties, for single giants in different regions of the HRD (the KGC, e.g.) or in different evolutionary stages (e.g., the AGB and GB giants in the CW eld). More detailed results are obtained by simply enlarging the number of synthetic stars. As an example, Fig. 7 shows the expected mass distribution function of the giants found in the KGC in Figs. 1 computed from a 10 enlarged sample, a total of 13000 stars with M > 1.15M with the same solar neighbourhood PDMF as used for Fig. 2, and an evolution based on grid 3 (grid 4 yields very similar results). Figs. 8 and 9 show the mass distributions (10) for the corresponding GB and AGB giants, respectively, which together populate the cool wind (CW) region in Fig. 1. It is remarkable to see that even the cool wind region of the HRD is predominantly populated by stars with low (1.5 to 2.5 M ) initial masses. 5. Discussion With the exception of the luminous blue-loop giants, there is a remarkable quantitative agreement between the best parameterized computed HRD and the observed solar neighbourhood HRD (see Table 1), even for critical stellar number counts such as in the HG region. Furthermore, the parameterization required for the best match is the same as demanded by previous empir-

ical tests, i.e., with cluster isochrones and evolved eclipsing binaries. The new kind of empirical test presented here is based on the dependence of star counts in the lower Hertzsprung gap on overshooting in stellar models with masses around 1.6 M . The number of HG stars, when computed on the basis of grid 2 (using overshooting for all stars, lower masses included) becomes strikingly out of range with the oberved number. It is too small by more than a factor of 2. The LGB, following in the evolution, is also underpopulated, but the HG region provides a more unambiguous evidence because its counts are independent of the low-mass cut-off choice (not so the LGB region). Computations without any overshooting, as with grid 1, noticably overestimate the number of KGC giants (see Table 1 again). The main reason is a larger ratio of core He-burning over core H-burning lifetimes and an increase of the superior mass limit for undergoing a He-ash i.e., 2.5 M with grid 1, versus 2.25M with grid 3 and 2.0M with grids 2 and 4. It is surprising that, already in a volume of only 50 pc radius, the assumption of a stricly random and otherwise constant stellar birthrate is good enough to reproduce the local HRD so well. Major star burst events would show up as a higher stellar density in the HRD along the respective isochrone, but that cannot be seen in Fig. 1. Hence, all our characteristic regions cover a large range of stellar age. Diffusion and mixing of the local stellar population in the course of galactic rotation may well be a reason for that. Any star-burst-related effects on the star counts (Table 1) are therefore well supressed. That is also true for smaller displacements in luminosity and colour of those stars, which have undetected fainter companions. In summary, only the hybrid grids (3 and 4) give a good model of the stellar number counts in all characteristic regions. Overshooting (on the MS) is started with stellar masses of 1.7 M and reaches its full extent between 2 M (grid 4) and 2.5 M (grid 3) representing the results of earlier empirical tests (Schr oder et al. 1997, Pols et al. 1997). The HRD stellar population densities turn out to be insensitive to that subtle difference, while the HG population agrees sensitively with the non-overshooting models for M < 1.7M (and solar-like abundances). Some ambiguity, however, remains: Pols et al. (1998) require overshooting for their best isochrone t of the metal-poor cluster NGC 2420, which has a turn-off mass as low as 1.5 M . Therefore, more work is needed to empirically quantify stellar evolution in this mass range. Based on our empirically tested evolutionary tracks (such as in grid 3), we can nally compute various characteristic properties of evolved stellar stages in the HRD the mass distribution functions for the KGC, the upper GB and AGB (as shown in Figs. 7 to 9) are only examples. An interesting application is a comparison of stellar evolutionary history to stellar activity, which is now widely observed over the HRD in terms of coronal X-ray emission (see H unsch et al 1996, H unsch & Schr oder 1996). It is surprising how far stellar activity can reach into late stellar evolution (H unsch et al. 1997) and more work will be published soon.

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K.-P. Schr oder: The solar neighbourhood HR diagram as a quantitative test for evolutionary time scales Miller G.E., Scalo M., 1979, ApJS, 41, 513 Pols O.R., Tout C.A., Eggleton P.P., Han Z., 1995, MNRAS, 274, 964 Pols O.R., Tout C.A., Schr oder K.-P., Eggleton P.P., Manner J., 1997, MNRAS, 289, 869 Pols O.R., Schr oder K.-P., Hurley J.R., Tout C.A., Eggleton P.P., 1998, MNRAS, in press Rogers F.J., Iglesias C.A., 1992, ApJS, 79, 507 Roxburgh I.W., 1992, A&A, 266, 291 Scalo J.M., 1986, Fundamentals of Cosmic Physics 11, 1 Schaller G., Schaerer D., Meynet G., Maeder A., 1992, A&AS, 96, 269 Sch onberner D., Harmanec P., 1995, A&A, 294, 509 Schr oder K.-P., Eggleton P.P., 1996, Rev. Mod. Astron., 9, 221 Schr oder K.-P., Pols O.R., Eggleton P.P., 1997, MNRAS, 285, 696 Talon S., Zahn J.-P., Maeder A., Meynet G., 1997, A&A, 322, 209 Umezu M., 1995, MNRAS, 276, 1287 Weigert A., 1975, Proc. 19th Intern. Coll. Li` ege (1974), 355

Another application of more general interest aims at galactic physics, i.e., on an estimate of the combined stellar mass-losses (gas and dust) on a galactic scale. Such gas and dust injection rates are important gures in modelling the chemical evolution of a galaxy (e.g., Dwek, 1997). When we use the solar neighbourhood as a probe of the galactic disk, our computed, empirically constrained stellar samples yield the fraction of relevant AGB giants, which is 0.3%. The computations also yield the distribution function of initial masses and the whole evolutionary histories. That includes the respective He core masses, which are a main factor for the subsequent AGB life times. In a future paper we will focus on those nal stages. Then, mass-losses become a signicant factor in stellar evolution which, at the same time, drives the giant into a dramatic increase of mass-loss and dust-formation towards the end of its stellar life (see, e.g., Dominik et al. 1990, Lafon & Berruyer 1991). Therefore, computations require a combined and selfconsistent treatment of both processes. A grid of such tracks, based on this work (an empirically derived PDMF and evolutionary history), will then yield the integrated injection rate of processed gas and dust back into the galactic interstellar medium.
Acknowledgements. This work has been carried out as part of a DFG project (ref. Se 420/12-1). We are indebted to P.P. Eggleton (IoA Cambridge, UK) for his permission and help to use his evolutionary code in the most up-to-date version. The IoA supported that collaboration by additional travel money and their kind hospitality. The author also wishes to thank O. Pols (IAC, Tenerife), E. Novotny (IoA) and especially E. Sedlmayr (TU Berlin) for many valuable discussions on the topic of this paper and its motivation. The ease of accessing the Hipparcos data through the Strasbourg astronomical data centre (CDS) was very much appreciated.

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