Abstract
Planetary Nebulae (PNe) are amongst the most spectacular objects produced by
stellar evolution, but the exact identity of their progenitors has never been
established for a large and homogeneous observational sample. We investigate
the relationship between PNe and their stellar progenitors in the Large
Magellanic Cloud (LMC) through the statistical comparison between a highly
complete spectroscopic catalog of PNe and the spatially resolved age
distribution of the underlying stellar populations. We find that most PN
progenitors in the LMC have main-sequence lifetimes in a narrow range between 5
and 8 Gyr, which corresponds to masses between 1.2 and 1.0 M\$\_ødot\$, and
produce PNe that last \$26^+6\_-7\$\~kyr on average. We tentatively detect a
second population of PN progenitors, with main-sequence lifetimes between 35
and 800\~Myr, i.e., masses between 8.2 and 2.1 M\$\_ødot\$, and average PN
lifetimes of \$11^+6\_-7\$ kyr. These two distinct and disjoint populations of
progenitors strongly suggest the existence of at least two physically distinct
formation channels for PNe. Our determination of PN lifetimes and progenitor
masses has implications for the understanding of PNe in the context of stellar
evolution models, and for the role that rotation, magnetic fields, and binarity
can play in the shaping of PN morphologies.
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