Twists in the flow: Revisiting convective mixing in rotating stellar models

I. Effect on the stellar structure

¹ Institute of Astronomy, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200D, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, Dartmouth College, 6127 Wilder Laboratory, Hanover, NH 03755, USA
³ Department of Astrophysics, IMAPP, Radboud University Nijmegen, PO Box 9010, 6500 GL, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
⁴ Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
⁵ Université Paris-Saclay, Université Paris Cité, CEA, CNRS, AIM, Gif-sur-Yvette, F-91191, France

^★ Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Received: 21 November 2025
Accepted: 19 March 2026

Abstract

Context. Convection and rotation are both key processes in stellar evolution modelling. While standard mixing-length theory (MLT) provides a widely used modelling of convection, it neglects the effects of rotation on convective transport.

Aims. We investigate how rotating mixing-length theory (R-MLT), which accounts for the influence of rotation on convection, affects the internal structure, convective mixing, and angular momentum transport in stellar models in comparison to the standard non-rotating MLT.

Methods. Using the MESA stellar structure and evolution software, we model the main-sequence evolution of a 5 M_⊙ star, for three cases: non-rotating, rotating with standard MLT for modelling convection, and rotating with R-MLT in convection zones, with the initial rotation rate set to 20 percent of the critical (Keplerian) value at the surface for the rotating models.

Results. We find that R-MLT reduces both the convective velocity and mixing length in the stellar core, leading to a smaller convective diffusion coefficient and a ∼20 percent reduction in the extent of the convective overshooting region. While the overall size of the convective core remains nearly unchanged, R-MLT changes the resulting chemical gradient at the core–envelope boundary, shifting the peak of the Brunt–Väisälä frequency and modifying the angular momentum transport in that region.

Conclusions. Including the effects of rotation in the treatment of convection through R-MLT introduces measurable structural and transport differences, underscoring the importance of incorporating rotation–convection coupling in models of stars.