A Large X-ray Flare from a Single Weak-lined T Tauri Star TWA-7 Detected with MAXI GSC

TL;DR

This paper reports the detection of a massive X-ray flare from the weak-lined T Tauri star TWA-7 using MAXI GSC, revealing that such large flares can occur without accretion disks or companions.

Contribution

First detection of a large X-ray flare from TWA-7 with MAXI GSC, showing flares can be significant even in stars without disks or companions.

Findings

X-ray flux during flare: 3×10^{-9} erg/cm^2/s

X-ray luminosity: 3×10^{32} erg/s

X-ray luminosity comparable to bolometric luminosity

Abstract

We present a large X-ray flare from a nearby weak-lined T Tauri star TWA-7 detected with the Gas Slit Camera (GSC) on the Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI). The GSC captured X-ray flaring from TWA-7 with a flux of $3\times10^{-9}$ ergs cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ in 2--20 keV band during the scan transit starting at UT 2010-09-07 18:24:30.The estimated X-ray luminosity at the scan in the energy band is 3$\times10^{32}$ ergs s$^{-1}$,indicating that the event is among the largest X-ray flares fromT Tauri stars.Since MAXI GSC monitors a target only during a scan transit of about a minute per 92 min orbital cycle, the luminosity at the flare peak might have been higher than that detected. At the scan transit, we observed a high X-ray-to-bolometric luminosity ratio, log $L_{\rm X}/L_{\rm bol}$ = $-0.1^{+0.2}_{-0.3}$; i.e., the X-ray luminosity is comparable to the bolometric luminosity. Since TWA-7 has neither an accreting disk nor a binary companion, the observed event implies that none of those are essential to generate such big flares in T Tauri stars.