Supersonic convection in stellar interiors *†

According to the result of the numerical simulation on stellar convective envelopes by the traditional mixing length theory, supersonic convection would occur on the top of the convective regions of the yellow-and-red giants and supergiants. This, however, is not self-consistent with the local convection theory itself. This paper is devoted to analyze in details the origin of supersonic convection, and at the same time to present a plot of the supersonic convection region on the H-R diagram based on the evolutionary track of population I stars. The main results of this paper are as follows: in the process of evolution, (1) no supersonic convection occurs in low-mass stars; (2) for intermediate-mass stars, because of the ionization of hydrogen, the supersonic convection occurs chiefly in the region of 3.6< lgTe <4.0, tilting from the lower left to the upper right on the H-R diagram and extending to the region of red giants for relatively massive stars; (3) for massive stars, the supersonic convection occurs after they deviate from ZAMS, the greater the stellar mass is, the earlier the supersonic convection emerges. For blue supergiants, the supersonic convection occurs at the absorbtion peak (lg T ∼5.3) of Fe and in the secondary ionization region of helium, but for the red- and yellow-giants and supergiants, it occurs in the ionization region of hydrogen.