Nuclear Reaction Rate Uncertainties and Astrophysical Modeling. II. Carbon Yields from Low-mass Giants

Calculations that demonstrate the influence of three key nuclear reaction rates on the evolution of Asymptotic Giant Branch stars have been carried out. We study the case of a star with an initial mass of 2Msun and a metallicity of Z=0.01, somewhat less than the solar metallicity. The dredge-up of nuclear processed material from the interior of the star, and the yield predictions for carbon, are sensitive to the rate of the N14(p,gamma)O15 and triple-alpha reactions. These reactions dominate the H- and He-burning shells of stars in this late evolutionary phase. Published uncertainty estimates for each of these two rates propagated through stellar evolution calculations cause uncertainties in carbon enrichment and yield predictions of about a factor of two. The other important He-burning reaction C12(alpha,gamma)O16, although associated with the largest uncertainty in our study, does not have a significant influence on the abundance evolution compared to other modelling uncertainties. This finding remains valid when the entire evolution from the main-sequence to the tip of the AGB is considered. We discuss the experimental sources of the rate uncertainties addressed here, and give some outlook for future work.