Revealing infrared populations of nearby galaxies using the Spitzer Space Telescope

TL;DR

This paper discusses how Spitzer Space Telescope observations have advanced understanding of AGB stars' infrared populations, their mass-loss processes, and their role in galactic chemical enrichment, highlighting implications for future infrared telescopes.

Contribution

It provides new insights into AGB stars' infrared characteristics, mass-loss mechanisms, and their impact on galaxy evolution, aiding future population synthesis models.

Findings

Enhanced understanding of AGB stars' infrared emission.

Progress in modeling mass-loss processes.

Implications for future infrared telescope observations.

Abstract

Due to their brightness in infrared, asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars are in important evolutionary stage to be understood at this wavelength. In particular, in next decades, when the infrared optimised telescopes, such as the JWST and the ELT are in operation, it will be essential to include the AGB phase more precisely into the population synthesis models. However, the AGB phase is still one of the remaining major problems in the stellar evolution. This is because the AGB stellar evolution is strongly affected by the mass-loss process from the stars. It is important to describe mass loss more accurately so as to incorporate it into stellar evolutionary models. Recent observations using the Spitzer Space Telescope (SST) enabled us to make a significant progress in understanding the mass loss from AGB stars. Moreover, the SST large surveys contributed to our understanding of the role of AGB stars in chemical enrichment process in galaxies. Here we present the summary of our recent progress.