Evolution of Thermally Pulsing Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars IV. Constraining Mass-Loss & Lifetimes of Low Mass, Low Metallicity AGB Stars

Abstract

The evolution and lifetimes of thermally pulsating asymptotic giant branch (TP-AGB) stars suffer from significant uncertainties. In this work, we analyze the numbers and luminosity functions of TP-AGB stars in six quiescent, low metallicity ([Fe/H] $\lesssim -0.86$) galaxies taken from the ANGST sample, using HST photometry in both optical and near-infrared filters. The galaxies contain over 1000 TP-AGB stars (at least 60 per field). We compare the observed TP-AGB luminosity functions and relative numbers of TP-AGB and RGB stars, to models generated from different suites of TP-AGB evolutionary tracks after adopting star formation histories (SFH) derived from the HST deep optical observations. We test various mass-loss prescriptions that differ in their treatments of mass-loss before the onset of dust-driven winds (pre-dust). These comparisons confirm that pre-dust mass-loss is important, since models that neglect pre-dust mass-loss fail to explain the observed TP-AGB/RGB ratio or the luminosity functions. In contrast, models with more efficient pre-dust mass-loss produce results consistent with observations. We find that for [Fe/H]$\lesssim -0.86$, lower mass TP-AGB stars ($M\lesssim 1M_{\odot }$) must have lifetimes of $\sim 0.5$ Myr and higher masses ($M\lesssim 3M_{\odot }$) must have lifetimes $\lesssim 1.2$ Myr. In addition, assuming our best-fitting mass-loss prescription, we show that the third dredge up has no significant effect on TP-AGB lifetimes in this mass and metallicity range.

Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. Isochrones will be soon available at http://stev.oapd.inaf.it/cmd

References in corpus (13)

• The propagation of uncertainties in stellar population synthesis modeling I: The relevance of uncertain aspects of stellar evolution and the IMF to the derived physical properties of galaxies
• The ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury
• Evolution of asymptotic giant branch stars I. Updated synthetic TP-AGB models and their basic calibration
• Spectroscopic and Photometric evidence of two stellar populations in the Galactic Globular Cluster NGC6121 (M4)
• The ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury IX. Constraining asymptotic giant branch evolution with old metal-poor galaxies
• Too little radiation pressure on dust in the winds of oxygen-rich AGB stars
• Nucleosynthesis Predictions for Intermediate-Mass AGB Stars: Comparison to Observations of Type I Planetary Nebulae
• Dust-driven Winds and Mass Loss of C-rich AGB Stars with subsolar Metallicities
• Exploring wind-driving dust species in cool luminous giants I. Basic criteria and dynamical models of M-type AGB stars
• The TP-AGB phase. Lifetimes from C and M star counts in Magellanic Cloud clusters
• Dust, pulsation, chromospheres and their role in driving mass loss from red giants in Galactic globular clusters
• The evolved stars of Leo II dSph galaxy from near-infrared UKIRT/WFCAM observations
• The AGB stars of the intermediate-age LMC cluster NGC 1846 Variability and age determination

Cited by in corpus (35)

• Constraining the thermally-pulsing asymptotic giant branch phase with resolved stellar populations in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• PARSEC V2.0: Stellar tracks and isochrones of low and intermediate mass stars with rotation
• Constraining the thermally pulsing asymptotic giant branch phase with resolved stellar populations in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• The wind speeds, dust content, and mass-loss rates of evolved AGB and RSG stars at varying metallicity
• A census of symbiotic stars in the 2MASS, WISE and Gaia surveys
• ALMA observations of the nearby AGB star L2 Puppis - I. Mass of the central star and detection of a candidate planet
• Self-consistent predictions for LIER-like emission lines from post-AGB stars
• Circumstellar Dust Around AGB Stars and Implications for Infrared Emission from Galaxies
• ${}^{22}$Ne and ${}^{23}$Na ejecta from intermediate-mass stars: The impact of the new LUNA rate for ${}^{22}$Ne(p,$\gamma$)${}^{23}$Na
• Constraining dust properties in Circumstellar Envelopes of C-stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud: optical constants and grain size of Carbon dust
• DUSTiNGS III: Distribution of Intermediate-Age and Old Stellar Populations in Disks and Outer Extremities of Dwarf Galaxies
• Studying the evolution of AGB stars in the Gaia epoch
• Astrophysical Distance Scale II. Application of the JAGB Method: A Nearby Galaxy Sample
• The Next Generation Virgo cluster Survey (NGVS). XXV. Fiducial panchromatic colors of Virgo core globular clusters and their comparison to model predictions
• A Dramatic Decrease in Carbon Star Formation in M31
• The evolution of white dwarfs resulting from helium-enhanced, low-metallicity progenitor stars
• The ALMA detection of CO rotational line emission in AGB stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• A Fresh Look at AGB stars in Galactic Open Clusters with Gaia: Impact on Stellar Models and the Initial-Final Mass Relation
• On the effects of the Initial Mass Function on Galactic chemical enrichment
• On the role of resonances in polluting white dwarfs by asteroids
• Alfvén wave-driven wind from RGB and AGB stars
• The most metal-rich asymptotic giant branch stars
• Seeing Red in M32: Constraints on the Stellar Content from Near- and Mid-Infrared Observations and Applications for Studies of More Distant Galaxies
• Searching for Anomalies in the ZTF Catalog of Periodic Variable Stars
• Dust formation and mass loss around intermediate-mass AGB stars with initial metallicity $Z_{\mathrm{ini}}\le 10^{-4}$ in the early Universe I: Effect of surface opacity on the stellar evolution and dust-driven wind
• The Isaac Newton Telescope Monitoring Survey of Local Group Dwarf Galaxies. VI. The Star Formation History and Dust Production in Andromeda IX
• Anomalous Stellar Populations in LSB Galaxies
• The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey. XVII. A Search for Planetary Nebulae in Virgo Cluster Globular Clusters
• On the Thermally Pulsing Asymptotic Giant Branch Contribution to the Light of Nearby Disk Galaxies
• The Local Ultraviolet to Infrared Treasury I. Survey Overview of the Broadband Imaging
• The expected stellar populations in the Kepler and CoRoT fields
• Binary asteroid dissociation and accretion around white dwarfs
• Ashes of FIRE: Modeling Dust Grain Size Evolution in the Local Group with FIRE
• The role of mass loss in constraining quenching time in dwarf galaxies from AGB and RGB star counts
• Dynamical Mass Loss at the End of TP-AGB stars