Non-adiabatic seismic study of the thin convective envelope of delta Scuti stars

For delta Sct stars, the theoretical predictions of a non-adiabatic pulsation code are very dependent on the characteristics of the thin convective envelope of the models (Balona and Evers 1999). The treatment of the non-adiabatic interaction between convection and pulsation also has a significant impact on the results, particularly near the red edge of the instability strip. The non-adiabatic theoretical predictions can be tested upon observations by comparing them to the amplitude ratios and phase differences as observed in different color passbands (Dupret et al. 2003). In the first part of this paper, we compare the results obtained by adopting different treatments of convection in the interior and atmosphere models: mixing-length theory (MLT) and full spectrum of turbulence (FST) (Canuto et al. 1996, CGM). In the second part, we examine the problem of the interaction between convection and pulsation and compare the mode stability obtained with and without including time-dependent convection in our non-adiabatic code.