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arXiv · 2608.06204

They Won't Be Giants: Missing Metal-Rich RGB Stars in Gaia Data Indicate Truncated Stellar Evolution

Yuxi Lu·Madeline Howell·Marc H. Pinsonneault·Andrew R. Casey·José G. Fernández-Trincado·José Eduardo Méndez Delgado
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Abstract

We investigate the population of luminous red giant branch stars as a function of metallicity using Gaia XP metallicity combined with SDSS-V, GALAH, and LAMOST. After applying uniform selection criteria and extinction corrections, we construct absolute magnitude distributions across metallicity bins spanning [Fe/H] =-1 to >0.4. We find a systematic deficit of luminous giants at high metallicity, while the red clump and lower red giant branch populations remain largely unchanged. This behavior is consistent with enhanced mass loss at high metallicity, arising from either binary interactions or single-star evolution. This trend is robust across multiple surveys and persists within volume-limited subsamples (1-4 kpc), suggesting it is not driven by distance or selection effects. Synthetic stellar populations based on PARSEC isochrones reproduce the overall magnitude distributions but do not predict a decline in luminous giants with metallicity. Tests of potential systematics, including extinction effects and metallicity scale consistency using open clusters, do not account for the observed trend. We also find no evidence that survey-to-survey differences in metallicity drive the observed result. Together, these findings suggest a metallicity-dependent reduction in the number of luminous red giants that is not captured by current models. This result may have implications for stellar evolution at high metallicity, helium white dwarf formation, and the initial mass function as well as the UV upturn in metal-rich galaxies.

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Yuxi Lu, Madeline Howell, Marc H. Pinsonneault, Andrew R. Casey, José G. Fernández-Trincado, José Eduardo Méndez Delgado. 2026-08-07. They Won't Be Giants: Missing Metal-Rich RGB Stars in Gaia Data Indicate Truncated Stellar Evolution. https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.06204

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