Atmospheres of Cool Evolved Stars

Dear Colleagues,

Cool evolved stars are an important source of chemical enrichment of the interstellar medium, and understanding their atmospheres offers a unique opportunity to comprehend their mass loss, and therefore to study the cycle of matter in the universe. The purpose of this Special Issue is to provide recent observational constraints and new theoretical advancements on the investigation of the atmospheres of cool evolved stars, by means of red giant branch (RGB), asymptotic giant branch (AGB), and red super giant (RSG) stars.

During these evolutionary stages, these stars get larger and larger, building molecule- and dust-rich circumstellar envelopes and losing enriched stellar material into the interstellar medium via their stellar winds. These materials constitute the foundation upon which new stars and planetary systems are formed, and also the building-blocks of life from which we emerged. The resulting conditions in the photosphere, chromosphere, the outer circumstellar envelope, and their inter-connectivity, become exceedingly difficult to model theoretically and to constrain observationally. However, over the past few decades, the confluence of improvements in high-resolution spectroscopic and high-angular-resolution interferometric observations and computational capabilities have brought us to the brink of several breakthroughs in our understanding of RGB, AGB, and RSG stars.

Ultimately, this Special Issue aims to showcase the most recent evidence on observational and theoretical breakthroughs in the investigations of cool evolved stars. Topics of interest for this Special Issue include, but are not limited to:

• Theoretical advancements on the atmospheres of cool evolved stars;
• Observational constraints on photospheres, chromospheres, circumstellar envelopes, and winds of evolved stars;
• Spatially resolved observations of atmospheres;
• The physics and chemistry of molecule and dust formation;
• The effects of pulsation and convection;
• The role of electro-magnetic forces.

Dr. Gioia Rau
Dr. Jacco Th. van Loon
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Atmosphere is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• evolved stars
• red giant and red supergiant stars
• AGB stars
• chromosphere
• photosphere
• atmospheric modeling
• multi-wavelength observations
• mass loss
• dust formation
• astrochemistry