Self-Organization In Stellar Evolution: Nucleosynthesis and its Size Dependence

An open question is how complex systems self-organize to produce emergent structures and properties, a
branch of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Examples are vortices and Benard cells. There is a quantity-
quality transition in natural systems - the properties of a system depend on its size. More recently, this has
been termed the size-complexity rule. We apply this rule to stars to compare them with other complex
systems in order to find universal patterns of self-organization independent of the substrate. As a measure
of complexity of a star, we are using the degree of grouping of nucleons into atoms, which reduces
nucleon entropy, increases the variety of elements, and changes the structure of the star. As seen in our
previous work, complexity, using action efficiency, is in power law proportionality of all other
characteristics of a complex system, including its size. Here we find that, as for the other systems studied,
the complexity of stars is in a power law proportionality with their size - the bigger a system is, the higher
its level of complexity is - despite differing explosion energies and initial metallicities from simulations
and data, which confirms the size-complexity rule and our model.