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Pulsating low-mass white dwarfs in the frame of new evolutionary sequences: III. The pre-ELM white dwarf instability strip

Two low-mass pre-white dwarfs, which could be precursors of ELM white dwarfs, have been observed to show multiperiodic photometric variations. They could constitute a new class of pulsating low-mass pre-white dwarf stars. We present a detailed nonadiabatic pulsation study of such stars, employing full evolutionary sequences of low-mass He-core pre-white dwarf models. We have considered models in which element diffusion is accounted for and also models in which it is neglected. We confirm and explore in detail a new instability strip in the domain of low gravities and low effective temperatures of the $T_{\rm eff}-\log g$ diagram, where low-mass pre-white dwarfs are currently found. The destabilized modes are radial and nonradial $p$ and $g$ modes excited by the $κ-γ$ mechanism acting mainly at the zone of the second partial ionization of He, with non-negligible contributions from the region of the first partial ionization of He and the partial ionization of H. The computations with element diffusion are unable to explain the pulsations observed in the two known pulsating pre-white dwarfs, suggesting that element diffusion might be inhibited at these stages of the pre-white dwarf evolution. Our nonadiabatic models without diffusion, on the other hand, naturally explain the existence and range of periods of the pulsating pre-white dwarf star WASP J1628$+$10B, although they fail to explain the pulsations of WASP J0247$-$25B, the other known member of the class, indicating that the He abundance in the driving region of this star might be substantially larger than predicted by our models. Further discoveries of additional members of this new class of pulsating stars and their analysis in the context of the theoretical background presented in this paper will shed new light on the evolutionary history of their progenitor stars.