The Coherent Radio Emission from the RS CVn Binary HR 1099

TL;DR

This study observed highly circularly polarized radio emissions from the RS CVn binary HR 1099, revealing fine temporal and spectral structures indicative of electron-cyclotron maser emission likely caused by stellar wind interactions.

Contribution

First detailed measurement of coherent radio emission structure from HR 1099 using high time resolution sampling, supporting ECME as the emission mechanism.

Findings

100% left hand circular polarization observed

Emission drifted across the spectrum during events

Modulation index increased with higher temporal resolution

Abstract

We used the Australia Telescope in March-April 2005 to observe the RS CVn binary HR 1099 at 1.384 and 2.368 GHz at two epochs, each of 9 h in duration and 11 days apart. During two episodes of coherent emission, we employed a recently installed facility to sample the data at 78 ms intervals to measure the fine temporal and spectral structure of HR 1099. Our main observational results include: ~100% left hand circularly polarised emission was seen at both 1.384 and 2.368 GHz during both epochs; in the first event the emission feature drifted across the spectrum; three 22 min integrations made at 78 ms time resolution showed that the modulation index of the Stokes V parameter increased monotonically as the integration time was decreased and was still increasing at our resolution limit; we believe that the highly polarised emission is due to electron-cyclotron maser emission (ECME) operating in the corona of one of the binary components. We discuss two kinds of maser sources that may be responsible for driving the observed events. We suggest that the ECME source may be an aurora-like phenomenon due to the transfer of plasma from the K2 subgiant to the G5 dwarf in a strong stellar wind.