is rotation needed to understand massive star evolution?
– submitted 18/02/2008 Presented by: Ian Hunter (Queen’s University of Belfast) Co-authors: Ines Brott (1), Danny Lennon (2), Norbert Langer (1), Philip Dufton, Carrie Trundle, Stephen Smartt, Alex de Koter (3), Chris Evans (4), Robert Ryans ; 1- Astronomical Institute, Utrecht University, 2 – IAC, Tenerife, 3- Astronomical Institute , University of Amsterdam, 4 – UK ATC, Edinburgh Status: Accepted as poster Abstract: Rotation is a key element of the evolutionary models of massive stars, however, until now, it has remained largely untested. The VLT-FLAMES survey of massive stars has provided a suitable sample of stars with a large range of rotational velocities for testing the models. We show that B-type stars at low metallicity rotate faster than their higher metallicity counterparts, in agreement with the theoretical models. We use the surface nitrogen abundance of ~130 LMC stars with rotational velocities up to ~300km/s to constrain the predicted rotational mixing process. We observ
