Gonzalez-Tora, G, Davies, B, Kudritzki, R-P and Plez, B (2021) The temperatures of red supergiants in low-metallicity environments. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 505 (3). ISSN 0035-8711

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Abstract

The temperatures of red supergiants (RSGs) are expected to depend on metallicity (Z) in such a way that lower Z RSGs are warmer. In this work, we investigate the Z-dependence of the Hayashi limit by analysing RSGs in the low-Z galaxy Wolf–Lundmark–Mellote, and compare with the RSGs in the higher Z environments of the Small Magellanic Cloud and Large Magellanic Cloud. We determine the effective temperature (Teff) of each star by fitting their spectral energy distributions, as observed by VLT + SHOOTER, with MARCS model atmospheres. We find average temperatures of TeffWLM=4400±202 K, TeffSMC=4130±103 K, and TeffLMC=4140±148 K. From population synthesis analysis, we find that although the Geneva evolutionary models reproduce this trend qualitatively, the RSGs in these models are systematically too cool. We speculate that our results can be explained by the inapplicability of the standard solar mixing length to RSGs.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2021 TheAuthors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	0201 Astronomical and Space Sciences
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy Q Science > QC Physics
Divisions:	Astrophysics Research Institute
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Related URLs:	Author
Date Deposited:	06 Jan 2022 10:05
Last Modified:	06 Jan 2022 10:15
DOI or ID number:	10.1093/mnras/stab1611
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/15975

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