Ultraviolet Spectroscopy of Rapidly-Rotating Solar-Mass Stars: Emission Line Redshifts as a Test of the Solar-Stellar Connection

TL;DR

This study examines ultraviolet emission line redshifts in solar-mass stars with varying rotation rates, revealing a correlation between rapid rotation and increased redshifts, indicating changes in magnetic heating processes.

Contribution

It provides new observational evidence linking stellar rotation, magnetic activity, and emission line shifts, highlighting a potential transition in magnetic heating mechanisms near a 2-day rotation period.

Findings

Redshift increases with faster stellar rotation.

HII314 shows enhanced redshifts across all temperatures above log T = 4.6.

A qualitative change in magnetic heating occurs near Prot = 2 days.

Abstract

We compare high-resolution ultraviolet spectra of the Sun and thirteen solarmass main sequence stars with different rotational periods that serve as proxies for their different ages and magnetic field structures. In this the second paper in the series, we study the dependence of ultraviolet emission-line centroid velocities on stellar rotation period, as rotation rates decrease from that of the Pleiades star HII314 (Prot = 1.47 days) to Alpha Cen A (Prot = 28 days). Our stellar sample of F9 V to G5 V stars consists of six stars observed with the Cosmic Origins 1Guest Observer, NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and User of the Data Archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute. Spectrograph on HST and eight stars observed with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph on HST. We find a systematic trend of increasing redshift with more rapid rotation (decreasing rotation period) that is similar to the increase in line red shift between quiet and plage regions on the Sun. The fastest-rotating solar-mass star in our study, HII314, shows significantly enhanced redshifts at all temperatures above log T = 4.6, including the corona, which is very different from the redshift pattern observed in the more slowly-rotating stars. This difference in the redshift pattern suggests that a qualitative change in the magnetic-heating process occurs near Prot = 2 days. We propose that HII314 is an example of a solar-mass star with a magnetic heating rate too large for the physical processes responsible for the redshift pattern to operate in the same way as for the more slowly rotating stars. HII314 may therefore lie above the high activity end of the set of solar-like phenomena that is often called the "solar-stellar connection".