Constraining magnetic-activity modulations in 3~solar-like stars observed by CoRoT and NARVAL

TL;DR

This study investigates magnetic activity cycles in three solar-like stars using asteroseismology and spectropolarimetry, setting constraints on activity variations and magnetic field strengths, but finds no definitive cycle detection due to limited data.

Contribution

It applies combined asteroseismic and spectropolarimetric methods to constrain magnetic activity in stars beyond the Sun, establishing lower and upper limits on activity variations.

Findings

No significant seismic variation detected, limiting activity cycle length to over 120 days.

Upper limits established for line-of-sight magnetic field components.

Additional data needed for definitive activity cycle detection.

Abstract

Stellar activity cycles are the manifestation of dynamo process running in the stellar interiors. They have been observed during years to decades thanks to the measurement of stellar magnetic proxies at the surface of the stars such as the chromospheric and X-ray emissions, and the measurement of the magnetic field with spectropolarimetry. However, all of these measurements rely on external features that cannot be visible during for example, a Maunder-type minimum. With the advent of long observations provided by space asteroseismic missions, it has been possible to pierce inside the stars and study their properties. Moreover, the acoustic-mode properties are also perturbed by the presence of these dynamos. We track the temporal variations of the amplitudes and frequencies of acoustic modes allowing us to search for signature of magnetic activity cycles, as has already been done in the Sun and in the CoRoT target HD49933. We use asteroseimic tools and more classical spectroscopic measurements performed with the NARVAL spectropolarimeter to check if there are hints of any activity cycle in three solar-like stars observed continuously by the CoRoT satellite: HD49385, HD181420, and HD52265.Our analysis gives very small variation of the seismic parameters preventing us from detecting any magnetic modulation. However we are able to provide a lower limit of any magnetic-activity change in the three stars that should be longer than 120 days, which is the length of the time series. Moreover we computed the upper limit for the line-of-sight magnetic field component. More seismic and spectroscopic data would be required to have a firm detection in these stars.