Studying the evolution of AGB stars in the Gaia epoch

Abstract

We present asymptotic giant branch (AGB) models of solar metallicity, to allow the interpretation of observations of Galactic AGB stars, whose distances should be soon available after the first release of the Gaia catalogue. We find an abrupt change in the AGB physical and chemical properties, occurring at the threshold mass to ignite hot bottom burning,i.e. $3.5M_{\odot }$. Stars with mass below $3.5M_{\odot }$ reach the C-star stage and eject into the interstellar medium gas enriched in carbon , nitrogen and ${}^{17}O$. The higher mass counterparts evolve at large luminosities, between $3\times 10^4{L}_{\odot }$ and $10^5{L}_{\odot }$. The mass expelled from the massive AGB stars shows the imprinting of proton-capture nucleosynthesis, with considerable production of nitrogen and sodium and destruction of ${}^{12}C$ and ${}^{18}O$. The comparison with the most recent results from other research groups are discussed, to evaluate the robustness of the present findings. Finally, we compare the models with recent observations of galactic AGB stars, outlining the possibility offered by Gaia to shed new light on the evolution properties of this class of objects.

21 pages, 11 figure, 3 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS (2016 July 11)

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• Understanding the evolution and dust formation of carbon stars in the LMC with a look at the JWST
• Neutron-capture element abundances in the planetary nebula NGC 5315 from deep optical and near-infrared spectrophotometry
• Rubidium and zirconium abundances in massive Galactic asymptotic giant branch stars revisited
• The CN-CH positive correlation in the globular cluster NGC 5286
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• Charting Circumstellar Chemistry of Carbon-rich AGB Stars: I. ALMA 3 mm spectral surveys
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• The Gaia Catalogue of Galactic AGB Stars
• ${}^{14}$N${/}^{15}$N abundance ratio toward massive star-forming regions with different Galactic distances
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