Atmospheric dynamics of red supergiant stars and Interferometry

TL;DR

This paper presents a 3D radiative transfer code applied to RHD simulations of red supergiant stars, demonstrating that convection-related surface structures are observable with current interferometers and improving interpretation over parametric models.

Contribution

The authors developed a new 3D LTE radiative transfer code for RSGs and showed its effectiveness in interpreting interferometric observations using RHD simulations.

Findings

Convection-related surface structures are observable with current interferometers.

RHD simulations provide a significant improvement over parametric models.

The code enables better interpretation of interferometric data for RSGs.

Abstract

We developed a 3D pure LTE radiative transfer code to derive observables expected for RSGs, with emphasis on small scale structures, from radiative-hydrodynamic (RHD) simulations of red supergiant stars (RSGs) carried out with CO5BOLD (Freytag et al. 2002). We show that the convection-related surface structures are observable with today's interferometers. Moreover, the RHD simulations are a great improvement over parametric models for the interpretation of interferometric observations.