The Mass-Loss Return from Evolved Stars to the Large Magellanic Cloud IV: Construction and Validation of a Grid of Models for Oxygen-Rich AGB Stars, Red Supergiants, and Extreme AGB Stars

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive grid of dust shell models for oxygen-rich evolved stars in the LMC, enabling improved mass-loss measurements and classification of stellar types through comparison with observational data.

Contribution

The authors developed and validated a large, publicly available grid of spherically symmetric dust shell models for O-rich AGB stars, RSGs, and extreme AGB stars, covering a wide parameter space.

Findings

Models match observed color-magnitude and color-color diagrams well.

Extreme AGB candidates are more consistent with C-rich dust.

The grid provides lower limits for mid-infrared colors of dusty AGB stars.

Abstract

To measure the mass loss from dusty oxygen-rich (O-rich) evolved stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), we have constructed a grid of models of spherically-symmetric dust shells around stars with constant mass-loss rates using 2Dust. These models will constitute the O-rich model part of the "Grid of Red supergiant and Asymptotic giant branch star ModelS" (GRAMS). This model grid explores 4 parameters - stellar effective temperature from 2100 K - 4700 K; luminosity from 10^3-10^6 L_Sun; dust shell inner radii of 3, 7, 11, and 15 R_Star; and 10.0 micron optical depth from 10^-4 to 26. From an initial grid of ~1200 2Dust models, we create a larger grid of ~69,000 models by scaling to cover the luminosity range required by the data. These models are offered to the public on a website. The matching in color-magnitude diagrams and color-color diagrams to observed O-rich asymptotic giant branch (AGB) and red supergiant (RSG) candidate stars from the SAGE and SAGE-Spec LMC samples and a small sample of OH/IR stars is generally very good. The extreme AGB star candidates from SAGE are more consistent with carbon-rich (C-rich) than O-rich dust composition. Our model grid suggests lower limits to the mid-infrared colors of the dustiest AGB stars for which the chemistry could be O-rich. Finally, the fitting of GRAMS models to SEDs of sources fit by other studies provides additional verification of our grid and anticipates future, more expansive efforts.