The surface rotation rates of young solar-type stars vary rapidly with age from the end of the pre-main sequence through the early main sequence. Important changes in the dynamos operating in these ...stars may result from this evolution, which should be observable in their surface magnetic fields. Here we present a study aimed at observing the evolution of these magnetic fields through this critical time period. We observed stars in open clusters and stellar associations of known ages, and used Zeeman Doppler imaging to characterize their complex magnetic large-scale fields. Presented here are results for 15 stars, from five associations, with ages from 20 to 250 Myr, masses from 0.7 to 1.2 M⊙, and rotation periods from 0.4 to 6 d. We find complex large-scale magnetic field geometries, with global average strengths from 14 to 140 G. There is a clear trend towards decreasing average large-scale magnetic field strength with age, and a tight correlation between magnetic field strength and Rossby number. Comparing the magnetic properties of our zero-age main-sequence sample to those of both younger and older stars, it appears that the magnetic evolution of solar-type stars during the pre-main sequence is primarily driven by structural changes, while it closely follows the stars’ rotational evolution on the main sequence.
Around 2% of all A stars have photospheres depleted in refractory elements. This is hypothesised to arise from gas being accreted more efficiently than dust, but the specific processes and the origin ...of the material – circum- or interstellar – are not known. The same depletion is seen in 30% of young, disk-hosting Herbig Ae/Be stars. We investigate whether the chemical peculiarity originates in a circumstellar disk. Using a sample of systems for which both the stellar abundances and the protoplanetary disk structure are known, we find that stars hosting warm, flaring group I disks typically have Fe, Mg and Si depletions of 0.5 dex compared to the solar-like abundances of stars hosting cold, flat group II disks. The volatile, C and O, abundances in both sets are identical. Group I disks are generally transitional, having radial cavities depleted in millimetre-sized dust grains, while those of group II are usually not. Thus we propose that the depletion of heavy elements emerges as Jupiter-like planets block the accretion of part of the dust, while gas continues to flow towards the central star. We calculate gas to dust ratios for the accreted material and find values consistent with models of disk clearing by planets. Our results suggest that giant planets of ~0.1 to 10 MJup are hiding in at least 30% of Herbig Ae/Be disks.
Abstract
There is a large change in surface rotation rates of sun-like stars on the pre-main sequence and early main sequence. Since these stars have dynamo-driven magnetic fields, this implies a ...strong evolution of their magnetic properties over this time period. The spin-down of these stars is controlled by interactions between stellar and magnetic fields, thus magnetic evolution in turn plays an important role in rotational evolution. We present here the second part of a study investigating the evolution of large-scale surface magnetic fields in this critical time period. We observed stars in open clusters and stellar associations with known ages between 120 and 650 Myr, and used spectropolarimetry and Zeeman Doppler Imaging to characterize their large-scale magnetic field strength and geometry. We report 15 stars with magnetic detections here. These stars have masses from 0.8 to 0.95 M⊙, rotation periods from 0.326 to 10.6 d, and we find large-scale magnetic field strengths from 8.5 to 195 G with a wide range of geometries. We find a clear trend towards decreasing magnetic field strength with age, and a power law decrease in magnetic field strength with Rossby number. There is some tentative evidence for saturation of the large-scale magnetic field strength at Rossby numbers below 0.1, although the saturation point is not yet well defined. Comparing to younger classical T Tauri stars, we support the hypothesis that differences in internal structure produce large differences in observed magnetic fields, however for weak-lined T Tauri stars this is less clear.
This is the first in a series of papers in which we describe and report the analysis of a large survey of Herbig Ae/Be stars in circular spectropolarimetry. Using the ESPaDOnS and Narval ...high-resolution spectropolarimeters at the Canada-France-Hawaii and Bernard Lyot Telescopes, respectively, we have acquired 132 circularly polarized spectra of 70 Herbig Ae/Be stars and Herbig candidates. The large majority of these spectra are characterized by a resolving power of about 65 000, and a spectral coverage from about 3700 Å to 1 μm. The peak signal-to-noise ratio per CCD pixel ranges from below 100 (for the faintest targets) to over 1000 (for the brightest). The observations were acquired with the primary aim of searching for magnetic fields in these objects. However, our spectra are suitable for a variety of other important measurements, including rotational properties, variability, binarity, chemical abundances, circumstellar environment conditions and structure, etc. In this paper, we describe the sample selection, the observations and their reduction, and the measurements that will comprise the basis of much of our following analysis. We describe the determination of fundamental parameters for each target. We detail the least-squares deconvolution (LSD) that we have applied to each of our spectra, including the selection, editing and tuning of the LSD line masks. We describe the fitting of the LSD Stokes I profiles using a multicomponent model that yields the rotationally broadened photospheric profile (providing the projected rotational velocity and radial velocity for each observation) as well as circumstellar emission and absorption components. Finally, we diagnose the longitudinal Zeeman effect via the measured circular polarization, and report the longitudinal magnetic field and Stokes V Zeeman signature detection probability. As an appendix, we provide a detailed review of each star observed.
We investigate how the observed large-scale surface magnetic fields of low-mass stars (∼0.1–2 M⊙), reconstructed through Zeeman–Doppler imaging, vary with age t, rotation and X-ray emission. Our ...sample consists of 104 magnetic maps of 73 stars, from accreting pre-main sequence to main-sequence objects (1 Myr ≲ t ≲ 10 Gyr). For non-accreting dwarfs we empirically find that the unsigned average large-scale surface field is related to age as t
−0.655 ± 0.045. This relation has a similar dependence to that identified by Skumanich, used as the basis for gyrochronology. Likewise, our relation could be used as an age-dating method (‘magnetochronology’). The trends with rotation we find for the large-scale stellar magnetism are consistent with the trends found from Zeeman broadening measurements (sensitive to large- and small-scale fields). These similarities indicate that the fields recovered from both techniques are coupled to each other, suggesting that small- and large-scale fields could share the same dynamo field generation processes. For the accreting objects, fewer statistically significant relations are found, with one being a correlation between the unsigned magnetic flux and rotation period. We attribute this to a signature of star–disc interaction, rather than being driven by the dynamo.
Zeeman–Doppler imaging (ZDI) has successfully mapped the large-scale magnetic fields of stars over a large range of spectral types, rotation periods and ages. When observed over multiple epochs, some ...stars show polarity reversals in their global magnetic fields. On the Sun, polarity reversals are a feature of its activity cycle. In this paper, we examine the magnetic properties of stars with existing chromospherically determined cycle periods. Previous authors have suggested that cycle periods lie on multiple branches, either in the cycle period–Rossby number plane or the cycle period–rotation period plane. We find some evidence that stars along the active branch show significant average toroidal fields that exhibit large temporal variations while stars exclusively on the inactive branch remain dominantly poloidal throughout their entire cycle. This lends credence to the idea that different shear layers are in operation along each branch. There is also evidence that the short magnetic polarity switches observed on some stars are characteristic of the inactive branch while the longer chromospherically determined periods are characteristic of the active branch. This may explain the discrepancy between the magnetic and chromospheric cycle periods found on some stars. These results represent a first attempt at linking global magnetic field properties obtained from ZDI and activity cycles.
ABSTRACT
We report first results on a method aimed at simultaneously characterizing atmospheric parameters and magnetic properties of M dwarfs from high-resolution near-IR spectra recorded with ...SPIRou in the framework of the SPIRou Legacy Survey (SLS). Our analysis relies on fitting synthetic spectra computed from marcs model atmospheres to selected spectral lines, both sensitive and insensitive to magnetic fields. We introduce a new code, ZeeTurbo, obtained by including the Zeeman effect and polarized radiative transfer capabilities to Turbospectrum. We compute a grid of synthetic spectra with ZeeTurbo for different magnetic field strengths and develop a process to simultaneously constrain Teff, log g, $\rm {M/H}$, $\rm {\alpha /Fe}$, and the average surface magnetic flux. In this paper, we present our approach and assess its performance using simulations, before applying it to six targets observed in the context of the SLS, namely AU Mic, EV Lac, AD Leo, CN Leo, PM J18482+0741, and DS Leo. Our method allows us to retrieve atmospheric parameters in good agreement with the literature, and simultaneously yields surface magnetic fluxes in the range 2–4 kG with a typical precision of 0.05 kG, in agreement with literature estimates, and consistent with the saturated dynamo regime in which most of these stars are.
Abstract
Magnetic activity is known to be correlated to the rotation period for moderately active main-sequence solar-like stars. In turn, the stellar rotation period evolves as a result of ...magnetized stellar winds that carry away angular momentum. Understanding the interplay between magnetic activity and stellar rotation is therefore a central task for stellar astrophysics. Angular momentum evolution models typically employ spin-down torques that are formulated in terms of the surface magnetic field strength. However, these formulations fail to account for the magnetic field geometry, unlike those that are expressed in terms of the open flux, i.e. the magnetic flux along which stellar winds flow. In this work, we model the angular momentum evolution of main-sequence solar-mass stars using a torque law formulated in terms of the open flux. This is done using a potential field source surface model in conjunction with the Zeeman–Doppler magnetograms of a sample of roughly solar-mass stars. We explore how the open flux of these stars varies with stellar rotation and choice of source surface radii. We also explore the effect of field geometry by using two methods of determining the open flux. The first method only accounts for the dipole component while the second accounts for the full set of spherical harmonics available in the Zeeman–Doppler magnetogram. We find only a small difference between the two methods, demonstrating that the open flux, and indeed the spin-down, of main-sequence solar-mass stars is likely dominated by the dipolar component of the magnetic field.
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we present an analysis of near-infrared spectropolarimetric and velocimetric data of the young M dwarf AU Mic, collected with SPIRou at the Canada–France–Hawaii telescope from ...2019 to 2022, mostly within the SPIRou Legacy Survey. With these data, we study the large- and small-scale magnetic field of AU Mic, detected through the unpolarized and circularly polarized Zeeman signatures of spectral lines. We find that both are modulated with the stellar rotation period (4.86 d), and evolve on a time-scale of months under differential rotation and intrinsic variability. The small-scale field, estimated from the broadening of spectral lines, reaches 2.61 ± 0.05 kG. The large-scale field, inferred with Zeeman–Doppler imaging from Least-Squares Deconvolved profiles of circularly polarized and unpolarized spectral lines, is mostly poloidal and axisymmetric, with an average intensity of 550 ± 30 G. We also find that surface differential rotation, as derived from the large-scale field, is ≃30 per cent weaker than that of the Sun. We detect the radial velocity (RV) signatures of transiting planets b and c, although dwarfed by activity, and put an upper limit on that of candidate planet d, putatively causing the transit-timing variations of b and c. We also report the detection of the RV signature of a new candidate planet (e) orbiting further out with a period of 33.39 ± 0.10 d, i.e. near the 4:1 resonance with b. The RV signature of e is detected at 6.5σ while those of b and c show up at ≃4σ, yielding masses of $10.2^{+3.9}_{-2.7}$ and $14.2^{+4.8}_{-3.5}$ M⊕ for b and c, and a minimum mass of $35.2^{+6.7}_{-5.4}$ M⊕ for e.
Aims.
The very weak magnetic field detected at the surface of Vega hints at a widespread population of weakly magnetic stars of A and B spectral types. We contribute here to gather more clues about ...the origin of this magnetism by investigating the long-term stability of the field geometry of this prototypical star.
Methods.
We use spectropolarimetric data collected as part of a long-term campaign, with more than 2000 observations spread between 2008 and 2018. Using various sub-sets extracted from the whole time series, we reconstruct several maps of the large-scale surface magnetic field.
Results.
We confirm that the polarimetric signal is modulated according to a ~0.68 d period, which we interpret as the stellar rotation period. The surface magnetic field is organized in a complex geometry. We confirm the existence of a very localized, polar magnetic spot previously reported for Vega, with a radial field strength of about −5 G. We show that the surface of the star is also covered by a dipole, with a polar strength close to 9 G and a dipole obliquity close to 90°. Both magnetic structures are remarkably stable over one decade. The available data suggest that smaller-scale magnetic spots may not be limited to the polar region, although the poor reliability of their reconstruction does not allow us to firmly conclude about their temporal evolution.
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