The Time-Averaged Mass-Loss Rates of Red Supergiants As Revealed by their Luminosity Functions in M31 and M33

Abstract

Mass-loss in red supergiants (RSGs) is generally recognized to be episodic, but mass-loss prescriptions fail to reflect this. Evolutionary models show that the total amount of mass lost during this phase determines if these stars evolve to warmer temperatures before undergoing core collapse. The current Geneva evolutionary models mimic episodic mass loss by enhancing the quiescent prescription rates whenever the star's outer layers exceed the Eddington luminosity by a large factor. This results in a 20 solar-mass model undergoing significantly more mass loss during the RSG phase than it would have otherwise, but has little effect on models of lower masses. We can test the validity of this approach observationally by measuring the proportion of high-luminosity RSGs to that predicted by the models. To do this, we use our recent luminosity-limited census of RSGs in M31 and M33, making modest improvements to membership, and adopting extinctions based on the recent panchromatic M31 and M33 Hubble surveys. We then compare the proportions of the highest luminosity RSGs found to that predicted by published Geneva models, as well as to a special set of models computed without the enhanced rates. We find good agreement with the models which include the supra-Eddington enhanced mass loss. The models with lower mass-loss rates predict a larger fraction of high-luminosity RSGs than observed, and thus can be ruled out. We also use these improved data to confirm that the upper luminosity limit of RSGs is log L/Lo~5.4, regardless of metallicity, using our improved data on M31 and M33 plus previous results on the Magellanic Clouds.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. Revised version includes an additional reference

References in corpus (82)

• Maps of Dust IR Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and CMBR Foregrounds
• Gaia Data Release 2. Summary of the contents and survey properties
• The Gaia mission
• A grid of MARCS model atmospheres for late-type stars I. Methods and general properties
• Grids of stellar models with rotation - I. Models from 0.8 to 120 Msun at solar metallicity (Z = 0.014)
• Color Transformations for the 2MASS Second Incremental Data Release
• The death of massive stars - I. Observational constraints on the progenitors of type II-P supernovae
• Mass loss from hot massive stars
• Reevaluating Old Stellar Populations
• The Effective Temperature Scale of Galactic Red Supergiants: Cool, But Not As Cool As We Thought
• Andromeda's Dust
• The Magellanic Clouds Photometric Survey: The Large Magellanic Cloud Stellar Catalog and Extinction Map
• A Survey of Local Group Galaxies Currently Forming Stars. I. UBVRI Photometry of Stars in M31 and M33
• An empirical formula for the mass-loss rates of dust-enshrouded red supergiants and oxygen-rich Asymptotic Giant Branch stars
• The Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury
• A UBVR CCD Survey of the Magellanic Clouds
• The VLT-FLAMES survey of massive stars: constraints on stellar evolution from the chemical compositions of rapidly rotating Galactic and Magellanic Cloud B-type stars
• The mass-loss rates of red supergiants and the de Jager prescription
• 2MASS NIR photometry for 693 candidate globular clusters in M31 and the Revised Bologna Catalogue
• The Effective Temperatures and Physical Properties of Magellanic Cloud Red Supergiants: The Effects of Metallicity
• Red supergiants as potential Type IIn supernova progenitors: Spatially resolved 4.6 micron CO emission around VY CMa and Betelgeuse
• A new mass-loss rate prescription for red supergiants
• The Evolution of Massive Stars. I. Red Supergiants in the Magellanic Clouds
• The Progenitor Masses of Wolf-Rayet Stars and Luminous Blue Variables Determined from Cluster Turn-offs. I. Results from 19 OB Associations in the Magellanic Clouds
• The wind speeds, dust content, and mass-loss rates of evolved AGB and RSG stars at varying metallicity
• Supernovae from Red Supergiants with Extensive Mass Loss
• The Initial Masses of the Red Supergiant Progenitors to Type-II Supernovae
• Probing the mass-loss history of AGB and red supergiant stars from CO rotational line profiles I. Theoretical model -- Mass-loss history unravelled in VY CMa
• The impact of mass-loss on the evolution and pre-supernova properties of red supergiants
• Atmospheric dynamics and the mass loss process in red supergiant stars
• Populations of rotating stars III. SYCLIST, the new Geneva Population Synthesis code
• The metallicity profile of M31 from spectroscopy of hundreds of HII regions and PNe
• The luminosities of cool supergiants in the Magellanic Clouds, and the Humphreys-Davidson limit revisited
• The Reddening of Red Supergiants: When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
• A dusty veil shading Betelgeuse during its Great Dimming
• The `Red Supergiant Problem': the upper luminosity boundary of type-II supernova progenitors
• The Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury VIII: A Wide-Area, High-Resolution Map of Dust Extinction in M31
• Carbon and oxygen in HII regions of the Magellanic Clouds: abundance discrepancy and chemical evolution
• Red Supergiants in the Andromeda Galaxy (M31)
• The Yellow and Red Supergiants of M33
• Yellow Supergiants in the Andromeda Galaxy (M31)
• Late-Type Red Supergiants: Too Cool for the Magellanic Clouds?
• The Wolf-Rayet Content of M33
• PHAT Stellar Cluster Survey. II. Andromeda Project Cluster Catalog
• The Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury: Triangulum Extended Region (PHATTER) I. Ultraviolet to Infrared Photometry of 22 Million Stars in M33
• Betelgeuse Just Isn't That Cool: Effective Temperature Alone Cannot Explain the Recent Dimming of Betelgeuse
• Discovery of a Thorne-Zytkow object candidate in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• A Spectroscopic Survey of Massive Stars in M31 and M33
• Analytic, dust-independent mass-loss rates for red supergiant winds initiated by turbulent pressure
• Effect of binary evolution on the inferred initial and final core masses of hydrogen-rich, Type~II supernova progenitors
• Star Clusters in M31: VII. Global Kinematics and Metallicity Subpopulations of the Globular Clusters
• A Catalog of Star Cluster Candidates in M33
• On The Red Supergiant Problem
• The Uncertain Masses of Progenitors of Core Collapse Supernovae and Direct Collapse Black Holes
• The Physical Properties of the Red Supergiant WOH G64: The Largest Star Known?
• AGB stars as tracers of metallicity and mean age across M33
• The Great Dimming of Betelgeuse: a Surface Mass Ejection (SME) and its Consequences
• HV 11423: The Coolest Supergiant in the SMC
• The Red Supergiant Content of M31
• The Red Supergiant Content of M31 and M33
• The Luminosity Function of Red Supergiants in M31
• Shedding Light on the Isolation of Luminous Blue Variables
• A theoretical investigation of the Humphreys-Davidson limit at high and low metallicity
• Emission-line stars discovered in the UKST H-alpha survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud; Part 1: Hot stars
• Revisiting the Modified Eddington Limit for Massive Stars
• An updated catalog of M31 globular-like clusters: UBVRI photometry, ages, and masses
• The Red Supergiant Binary Fraction as a Function of Metallicity in M31 and M33
• Luminosity distribution of Type II supernova progenitors
• Binary Red Supergiants II: Discovering and Characterizing B-type Companions
• Multiplicity of the red supergiant population in the young massive cluster NGC 330
• Evolved Massive Stars at Low-metallicity II. Red Supergiant Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Superadiabaticity and the metallicity independence of the Humphreys-Davidson limit
• Red Supergiants in M31: The Humphreys-Davidson limit at high metallicity
• Cool, Luminous, and Highly Variable Stars in the Magellanic Clouds from ASAS-SN: Implications for Thorne-Żytkow Objects and Super-Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars
• A critical re-evaluation of the Thorne-Żytkow object candidate HV 2112
• A Survey for Planetary Nebulae in M31 Globular Clusters
• Multiplicity among the cool supergiants in the Magellanic Clouds
• GHRS Observations of Cool, Low-Gravity Stars. VI Mass-Loss Rates and Wind Parameters for M Giants
• An atlas of cool supergiants from the Magellanic Clouds and typical interlopers. A guide for the classification of luminous red stars
• Andromeda Optical and Infrared Disk Survey I. New Insights in Wide-Field Near-IR Surface Photometry
• Mass loss of red supergiants: a key ingredient for the final evolution of massive stars
• Recent advances in non-LTE stellar atmosphere models

Cited by in corpus (18)

• Early Spectroscopy and Dense Circumstellar Medium Interaction in SN 2023ixf
• Early hard X-rays from the nearby core-collapse supernova SN2023ixf
• ALMA detection of CO rotational line emission in red supergiant stars of the massive young star cluster RSGC1 -- Determination of a new mass-loss rate prescription for red supergiants
• Establishing a mass-loss rate relation for red supergiants in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Clumping and X-Rays in cooler B supergiant stars
• Very Massive Star Models: I. Impact of Rotation and Metallicity and Comparisons with Observations
• The effect of mass loss in models of red supergiants in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Impact of main-sequence mass loss on the appearance, structure and evolution of Wolf-Rayet stars
• Investigating episodic mass loss in evolved massive stars: I. Spectroscopy of dusty massive stars in ten southern galaxies
• The Great Dimming of the hypergiant star RW Cephei: CHARA Array images and spectral analysis
• Newly Discovered Wolf-Rayet Stars in M31
• Investigating episodic mass loss in evolved massive stars: II. Physical properties of red supergiants at subsolar metallicity
• Investigating episodic mass loss in evolved massive stars: III. Spectroscopy of dusty massive stars in three northern galaxies
• Evolving massive stars to core collapse with GENEC: Extension of equation of state, opacities and effective nuclear network
• Thorne-Żytkow Objects
• Stellar evolution through the Red Supergiant phase
• Red Supergiants in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies
• A machine-learning photometric classifier for massive stars in nearby galaxies II. The catalog