Evolution and Nucleosynthesis in Low‐Mass Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars. I. Formation of Population I Carbon Stars

Abstract

New models of thermally pulsing asymptotic giant branch (TP-AGB) stars of low mass and solar chemical composition are presented, namely, 1 ≤ M/M☉ ≤ 3, Z = 0.02, and Y = 0.28. The influence of various parameters (such as the initial core mass, the envelope mass, the mass-loss rate, the opacity, and the mixing length) on the properties of the models is discussed in detail. Our main findings are the following: