Cool giant and supergiant stars are among the largest and most luminous stars in the Universe and, therefore, dominate the integrated light of their host galaxies. These stars were extensively studied during last few decades, however their relevant properties like photometric variability and mass loss are still poorly constrained. Understanding of these properties is crucial in the context of a broad range of astrophysical questions including chemical enrichment of the Universe, supernova progenitors, and the extragalactic distance scale. Atmospheres of giant and supergiant stars are characterized by complex dynamics due to different interacting processes, such as convection, pulsation, formation of molecules and dust, and the development of mass loss. Current 1D/3D dynamical model atmospeheres are able to simulate these processes and produce a good agreement with the observed spectral features of evolved stars. However, the models lack constraints and need to be confronted to observables. Dynamical processes in stellar atmospheres impact the formation of spectral lines producing their asymmetries and Doppler shifts. Thus, by studying the line-profile variations on spatial and temporal scales it is possible to reconstruct atmospheric motions in evolved stars. As will be shown in this thesis, a tomographic method is an ideal technique for this purpose. The tomographic method is based on construction and cross-correlation of spectral templates (masks) with observed or synthetic stellar spectra in order to recover velocity fields at different optical depths in the stellar atmosphere.The first part of the thesis further improves the original implementation of the tomographic method. This improvement involves the computation of the contribution function in order to correctly determine an optical depth of formation of spectral lines. The tomographic method is, then, fully validated by applying it to a stellar convection simulation of a red supergiant star and correctly recovering its velocity field throughout the atmosphere. The second part of the thesis applies the tomographic method to the red supergiant star μ Cep in order to constrain its atmospheric motions and relate them to photometric variability. A phase lag (hysteresis) between the effective temperature and the radial velocity variations is revealed with timescales of a few hundred days, similar to photometric ones. A comparison to a stellar convection simulation of a red supergiant star indicates that hysteresis loops are linked to the stochastic shocks generated and shaped by the underlying large-scale convection and may be responsible for photometric variations in μ Cep. The third part of the thesis applies the tomographic method to spectro-interferometric observations of the Mira-type star S Ori. The uniform-disk angular diameters measured at wavelengths contributing to the tomographic masks increase with decrease of an optical depth probed by the masks. This validates the capability of the tomographic method to probe distinct geometrical depths in the stellar atmosphere. The last part of the thesis applies the tomograhic method to the Mira-type star RY Cep and compares the results to those obtained for μ Cep in this thesis. The comparison reveals differences in their behavior in the temperature-velocity plane pointing to the posibility to differentiate between Mira-type and red supergiant stars from their spectroscopic signatures. / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ulb.ac.be/oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/285064 |
| Date | 06 March 2019 |
| Creators | Kravchenko, Kateryna |
| Contributors | Van Eck, Sophie, Chiavassa, Andréa, Jorissen, Alain, Godefroid, Michel, Perrin, Guy, Wittkowski, Markus, Freytag, Bernd |
| Publisher | Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Université libre de Bruxelles, Faculté des Sciences – Physique, Bruxelles |
| Source Sets | Université libre de Bruxelles |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis, info:ulb-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis, info:ulb-repo/semantics/openurl/vlink-dissertation |
| Format | 3 full-text file(s): application/pdf | application/pdf | application/pdf |
| Rights | 3 full-text file(s): info:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccess | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess | info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess |
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