The impact of AGB stars on the life of stellar systems

During the latest phases of their lives, low-intermediate mass stars (M<8Msun) evolve through the Asymptotic Giant branch (AGB) phase. Although very rapid, the AGB phase represents a crucial step for the chemical evolution of the system where these stars form. The reason is that AGB stars undergo an advanced nucleosynthesis and experiment dredge-up events, while they progressively lose the majority of their mass through stellar winds. Furthermore, the low temperature and high densisty of their stellar winds prove extremely favourable conditions for dust condensation in the circumstellar envelopes. All the reprocessed gas and dust lost by the AGB stars enrich the insterstellar medium of the host system. Detailed modelling of these complex physical processes are essential to reconstruct the impact that these stars had on the history of formation and chemical evolution of stellar clusters and galaxies. In this talk I will present how the latest generation of AGB+dust evolutionary models has been recently used to this scope in different environments: from globular clusters, to unveil the origine of multiple populations, to Local Group dwarf galaxies, to infer star formation history and dust production rate.