Magnetic Dynamos and Stars

Djehuty is a code that has been developed over the last five years by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), from earlier code designed for programmatic efforts. Operating in a massively parallel environment, Djehuty is able to model entire stars in 3D. The object of this proposal was to continue the effort to introduce magneto-hydrodynamics (MHD) into Djehuty, and investigate new classes of inherently 3D problems involving the structure, evolution and interaction of stars and planets. However, towards the end of the second year we discovered an unexpected physical process of great importance in the evolution of stars. Consequently for the third year we changed direction and concentrated on this process rather than on magnetic fields. Our new process was discovered while testing the code on red-giant stars, at the 'helium flash'. We found that a thin layer was regularly formed which contained a molecular-weight inversion, and which led therefore to Rayleigh-Taylor instability. This in turn led to some deeper-than-expected mixing, which has the property that (a) much {sup 3}He is consumed, and (b) some {sup 13}C is produced. These two properties are closely in accord with what has been observed over the last thirty years in red giants, whereas what was observed was largely in contradiction to what earlier theoretical models predicted. Thus our new 3D models with Djehuty explain a previously-unexplained problem of some thirty years standing