Evolutionary Tracks

Abstract

It is now accepted without any doubts that the central stars of Planetary Nebulae (CPN) are rapidly evolving objects in the transition from the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) to the white-dwarf regime. After the pioneering study of Paczyński (1971) it has been demonstrated by Schönberner (1981) that Paczyński's calculations are too crude for the understanding of post-AGB evolution because the latter depends very sensitively on the detailed internal stellar structure, i.e. on the past AGB evolution. More precisely, the evolution of an AGB remnant is a function of the thermal-pulse cycle phase ϕ during which this remnant has been created by the planetary-nebula (PN) formation process. This has been shown by Schönberner (1979, 1983) and later fully been explored by Iben (1984).