2017PASP..129d4201A

The Am, or "Metallic-line," stars have too strong line strengths of the iron peak elements for their temperatures and too weak He, Ca, etc. Michaud showed that the A4-F2 V stars, which occur in the same area of the main sequence as the Am stars, have radiative zones below their photospheres where diffusion acts to push metals upward into the photospheres by radiation pressure and lets Ca, etc. sink downward, but only if the stars are slow rotators. Slow rotation can be caused by the formation of disks or by tidal interactions in binaries. The Am stars are rich in binaries with P < 100 days; the rapidly rotation A4-F2 V stars have no such binaries. The special peculiarities do not occur in stars above the luminosity class V stars, except among the ρ Puppis stars, so the radiative zones must disappear and the atmospheres become well mixed with the interiors. The suggestion that the ρ Puppis stars are the descendents of the Am stars fails because there are too few ρ Puppis stars by a factor of about 100. Then by searching for binaries among evolved stars I conclude that the Am stars plus A4-F2 V normal stars evolve into A7-F9 IV stars and then into F2-F9 (or later) III stars with normal abundances.