EXTREME HELIUM STARS
C.S. JEFFERY
Extreme helium stars are highly evolved luminous stellar remnants. Their
exotic surface abundances point to previous evolution through the white
dwarf sequence, followed by re-ignition due to a late helium shell flash
or to a binary merger. The existence of pulsations in many helium stars,
due to strange-mode instabilities or the Z-bump
-mechanism, provide
a range of diagnostics including radii from Baade's method and
contraction rates from period changes. I review the basic
observational and theoretical properties of extreme helium star pulsations
and show how these have been used to constrain evolutionary models,
with particular reference to the cases of V652 Her and BX Cir.