Discovery of secular variations in the atmospheric abundances of magnetic Ap stars

Context. The stars of the middle main sequence have relatively quiescent outer layers, and unusual chemical abundance patterns may develop in their atmospheres. The presence of chemical peculiarities reveal the action of such subsurface phenomena as gravitational settling and radiatively driven levitation of trace elements, and their competition with mixing processes such as turbulent diffusion. At present, little is known about the time evolution of these anomalous abundances, nor about the role that diffusion may play in maintaining them, during the main sequence lifetime of such a star.