Bolometric Flux Estimation for Cool Evolved Stars

TL;DR

This paper improves the estimation of bolometric fluxes for cool evolved stars using modern spectral templates and reddening corrections, enhancing accuracy over previous methods based on broad-band photometry.

Contribution

Recalibrates the F_BOL versus F_2.2um relationship with updated spectral templates and reddening estimation, improving flux prediction accuracy for cool evolved stars.

Findings

F_BOL predictions are about 11% lower than previous estimates.

Recalibration enhances the utility of broad-band photometry for flux estimation.

Incorporates empirical spectral templates and reddening in SED fitting.

Abstract

Estimation of bolometric fluxes (F_BOL) is an essential component of stellar effective temperature determination with optical and near-infrared interferometry. Reliable estimation of F_BOL simply from broad-band K-band photometry data is a useful tool in those cases were contemporaneous and/or wide-range photometry is unavailable for a detailed spectral energy distribution (SED) fit, as was demonstrated in Dyck et al. (1974). Recalibrating the intrinsic F_BOL versus observed F_2.2um relationship of that study with modern SED fitting routines, which incorporate the significantly non-blackbody, empirical spectral templates of the INGS spectral library (an update of the library in Pickles 1998) and estimation of reddening, serves to greatly improve the accuracy and observational utility of this relationship. We find that F_BOL values predicted are roughly 11% less than the corresponding values predicted in Dyck et al. (1974), indicating the effects of SED absorption features across bolometric flux curves.