skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: THE MASS-LOSS RETURN FROM EVOLVED STARS TO THE LARGE MAGELLANIC CLOUD. VI. LUMINOSITIES AND MASS-LOSS RATES ON POPULATION SCALES

Journal Article · · Astrophysical Journal
;  [1];  [2];  [3]
  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University, 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218 (United States)
  2. UPMC-CNRS UMR7095, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, F-75014 Paris (France)
  3. Center for Imaging Science and Laboratory for Multiwavelength Astrophysics, Rochester Institute of Technology, 54 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY 14623 (United States)

We present results from the first application of the Grid of Red Supergiant and Asymptotic Giant Branch ModelS (GRAMS) model grid to the entire evolved stellar population of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). GRAMS is a pre-computed grid of 80,843 radiative transfer models of evolved stars and circumstellar dust shells composed of either silicate or carbonaceous dust. We fit GRAMS models to {approx}30,000 asymptotic giant branch (AGB) and red supergiant (RSG) stars in the LMC, using 12 bands of photometry from the optical to the mid-infrared. Our published data set consists of thousands of evolved stars with individually determined evolutionary parameters such as luminosity and mass-loss rate. The GRAMS grid has a greater than 80% accuracy rate discriminating between oxygen- and carbon-rich chemistry. The global dust injection rate to the interstellar medium (ISM) of the LMC from RSGs and AGB stars is on the order of 2.1 Multiplication-Sign 10{sup -5} M{sub Sun} yr{sup -1}, equivalent to a total mass injection rate (including the gas) into the ISM of {approx}6 Multiplication-Sign 10{sup -3} M{sub Sun} yr{sup -1}. Carbon stars inject two and a half times as much dust into the ISM as do O-rich AGB stars, but the same amount of mass. We determine a bolometric correction factor for C-rich AGB stars in the K{sub s} band as a function of J - K{sub s} color, BC{sub K{sub s}}= -0.40(J-K{sub s}){sup 2} + 1.83(J-K{sub s}) + 1.29. We determine several IR color proxies for the dust mass-loss rate (M-dot{sub d}) from C-rich AGB stars, such as log M-dot{sub d} = (-18.90/((K{sub s}-[8.0])+3.37) - 5.93. We find that a larger fraction of AGB stars exhibiting the 'long-secondary period' phenomenon are more O-rich than stars dominated by radial pulsations, and AGB stars without detectable mass loss do not appear on either the first-overtone or fundamental-mode pulsation sequences.

OSTI ID:
22036890
Journal Information:
Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 753, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English