Density and pressure profiles from the 2 M_⊙ red giant MESA model of Ohlmann et al. (2016), shown as a function of the radius. Dashed lines indicate the polytropic reconstruction used as initial conditions, computed around the location where ϵ_ρ = 3, which is marked by red crosses. The vertical line marks the radius where ϵ_ρ = 10 in the reconstructed stellar structure. The red curve shows the stratification parameter (ϵ_ρ) as a function of radius for the MESA model, while black dots indicate the ϵ_ρ values employed in our simulations.