Beasor, ER and Davies, B (2017) The evolution of Red Supergiant mass-loss rates. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. ISSN 0035-8711

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Abstract

The fate of massive stars with initial masses >8M$_\odot$ depends largely on the mass-loss rate (\mdot ) in the end stages of their lives. Red supergiants (RSGs) are the direct progenitors to Type II-P core collapse supernovae (SN), but there is uncertainty regarding the scale and impact of any mass-loss during this phase. Here we used near and mid-IR photometry and the radiative transfer code DUSTY to determine luminosity and \mdot\ values for the RSGs in two Galactic clusters (NGC 7419 and $\chi$ Per) where the RSGs are all of similar initial mass ($M_{\rm initial}$$\sim$16M$_\odot$), allowing us to study how \mdot\ changes with time along an evolutionary sequence. We find a clear, tight correlation between luminosity and \mdot\ suggesting the scatter seen in studies of field stars is caused by stars of similar luminosity being of different initial masses. From our results we estimate how much mass a 16M$_\odot$ star would lose during the RSG phase, finding a star of this mass would lose a total of 0.61$^{+0.92}_{-0.31}$M$_\odot$. This is much less than expected for \mdot\ prescriptions currently used in evolutionary models.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	astro-ph.SR; astro-ph.SR
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy Q Science > QC Physics
Divisions:	Astrophysics Research Institute
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Related URLs:	Author
Date Deposited:	15 Dec 2017 12:48
Last Modified:	04 Sep 2021 10:55
DOI or ID number:	10.1093/mnras/stx3174
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/7693

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