Rationale

The Sun will become a red giant, yet many fundamental aspects of the structure and evolution of red giants are unknown - convection, mixing, pulsation, mass loss, and the way these processes are affected by rotation and magnetic fields, to name but a few.

Many of these problems are shared by more massive red supergiants, with implications for their demise as supernovae. Poor understanding of the timescales of their evolution and their feedback (mechanical, chemical) has consequences also for galactic evolution models and when using either resolved populations of red giants and supergiants or the integrated light of galaxies to infer knowledge of the star formation history.

The IAU Working Group on Red Giants and Supergiants has set itself two objectives: [1] to identify the most important Physics problems pertaining to the evolution of red giants and supergiants and their interaction with their surroundings, and [2] to make suggestions how to make progress in these
areas.
 

Before finalising their report, we wish to dedicate a meeting to red giants and supergiants and how gaps in our understanding affect other fields of Astrophysics.