A star has evolved

Scientific rationale

The evolution of low-mass stars (up to 8 solar masses) plays a critical role in the evolution of galaxies and the Universe as a whole. With the advent of new observational facilities, recent results have given us an unprecedented view on evolved stars. With upcoming new major facilities, such as the James Webb Space Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope, it is more than timely to review the current state of the art and discuss the future progress. The conference will focus on fundamental questions in evolved-star research, from stellar mass-loss, the chemistry of evolved stars, to the post-AGB stage. These topics will be discussed in light of recent and future observational advances, and theoretical possibilities.

The conference is organized in honor of Prof. Hans Olofsson, who for nearly four decades has been a pioneer and driving actor in the field of evolved stars research. He has significantly contributed to our knowledge of the mass-loss from AGB stars, the mechanism behind the mass-loss, the chemical composition of the stellar winds, the nature behind episodic mass-loss, the maser emission from the envelopes around AGB stars, and the evolution of stars past the AGB stage. In addition, he has been one of the leading scientists to develop the observational methods using molecular line emission at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths from both single-dish telescopes and interferometers.

These topics remain fundamental to our understanding of evolved stars and their role in the evolution of the Universe. The recent results with, e.g., ALMA and VLT/SPHERE, and high-performance computational models have proven that while many questions are answered, the increased knowledge leads to new, fundamental questions.

Topics

Topics covered during the conference are:

• Carbon stars
• Mass loss, including episodic mass loss
• Circumstellar chemistry
• Masers
• Beyond the AGB

Invited speakers

S. Bladh, E. De Beck, E. Humphreys, A. Karakas, J. Kastner, K. Menten, T.J. Millar, L.Å. Nyman, C. Sánchez Contreras, E. Villaver, R. Waters

Meeting format

The meeting will have a program with invited keynote speakers and contributed talks. The program will leave sufficient time for discussion on each presentation, as well as general discussion between the participants. In order to keep discussions informal and open, the number of participants will be limited to 50.

SOC: F. Kerschbaum (chair), S. Ramstedt (co-chair), E. De Beck, L. Decin, E. Humphreys, M. Lindqvist, M. Maercker, K. Menten, A. Richards, L.A. Willson, H. Van Winckel, P. Wood

LOC: M. Maercker (chair), E. De Beck, M. Lindqvist

Contact: evolved.stars2019@gmail.com