Planetary Nebulae of the Large Magellanic Cloud I: A multiwavelength analysis

TL;DR

This study analyzes nine planetary nebulae in the Large Magellanic Cloud across multiple wavelengths to understand their evolution, dust production, and mass-loss mechanisms during the late AGB phase, linking observations with theoretical models.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive multiwavelength analysis of LMC planetary nebulae, linking nebular and stellar properties to progenitor evolution and dust formation, which is novel in this context.

Findings

Characterized nebulae and central stars, estimating gas and dust masses.

Compared observed energy distributions with photoionization models including dust.

Identified near-IR bumps indicating hot dust presence in some nebulae.

Abstract

Planetary nebulae (PNe) have three main components: a central star (CS), ionised gas and dust in the nebula. Each of them contains critical chemical fingerprints of their evolution, serving as tracers of the evolution, nucleosynthesis and dust production that occurred during the preceding asymptotic giant branch (AGB) phase. We aim to build a bridge to link the PN phase to the evolution of their progenitors, trying to better understand the dust production and mass-loss mechanism during the final AGB phase. Here, we present a comprehensive study of nine Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) spherical or elliptical PNe whose observations from the ultraviolet (UV) through the infrared (IR) are available in the literature. We characterize nebulae and CSs, finding information as the amount of gas that makes up the nebula and the dust that surrounds the CS, necessary to reconstruct the evolutionary history of mass-loss and dust production. We compare the observed energy distribution of the selected PNe to that obtained from photoionization modeling, taking into account the presence of dust. The physical and chemical parameters of the central stars are then compared with the predictions from the evolutionary tracks. We characterized the source, assigning to each CS a progenitor, early-AGB mass. We estimated the mass of the nebula and the dust-to-gas ratio. For 5 objects, we find evidence for the presence of a near-IR bump, which would be connected to the presence of hot dust.