NLTE water lines in Betelgeuse-like atmospheres

Abstract

The interpretation of water lines in red supergiant stellar atmospheres has been much debated over the past decade. The introduction of the so-called MOLspheres to account for near-infrared "extra" absorption has been controversial. We propose that non-LTE effects should be taken into account before considering any extra-photospheric contribution. After a brief introduction on the radiative transfer treatment and the inadequacy of classical treatments in the case of large-scale systems such as molecules, we present a new code, based on preconditioned Krylov subspace methods. Preliminary results suggest that NLTE effects lead to deeper water bands, as well as extra cooling.

9 pages, 5 figures, Proceedings of the Betelgeuse Workshop, Paris, 2012