Mesa2gadget: Bridging the Gap between 1-d and 3-d Stellar Models

Thermal pulsation is a complicated mixing event in AGB stars which involves interaction between several layers of the stellar interior, and which occurs on very short timescales compared to a star’s evolutionary timescale. The temporal constraint makes these events difficult to resolve in a 1-D stellar evolution codes, and instead they are typically studied in isolation through 3-D smoothed-particle hydrodynamical simulations. However, in their 2015 instrument paper, Paxton et al. demonstrated that the 1-D MESA (Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics) stellar evolution code could produce robust interior profiles of thermally pulsating AGB stars. Following on from investigations done this year involving MESA models of massive stars, we present “MESA2GADGET,” a Python-based toolkit for automating the projection of 1-D stellar density profiles to 3-D particle distributions for use in smoothed-particle hydrodynamics simulations. The package facilitates the conversion of 1-D models of the interior structures of stars during exotic and time-sensitive evolutionary phases to initial conditions in 3-D codes, and establishes an accessible foundation for prescribing empirically informed, rather than ad hoc, evolutionary initial conditions for high-resolution stellar simulations. Subject headings: computational methods: algorithms, workflows—stars: evolution, AGB, pulsation