Cool Stars and Space Weather

TL;DR

This paper reviews how stellar magnetic activity influences space weather around cool stars and exoplanets, affecting their environments and potential habitability, based on discussions from a 2014 scientific session.

Contribution

It summarizes recent research on stellar activity, space weather, and their implications for exoplanet environments and habitability, integrating solar system knowledge with exoplanet studies.

Findings

Stellar activity varies with age, mass, and rotation.

Exoplanet space weather differs significantly from solar system.

Understanding stellar magnetism informs exoplanet habitability.

Abstract

Stellar flares, winds and coronal mass ejections form the space weather. They are signatures of the magnetic activity of cool stars and, since activity varies with age, mass and rotation, the space weather that extra-solar planets experience can be very different from the one encountered by the solar system planets. How do stellar activity and magnetism influence the space weather of exoplanets orbiting main-sequence stars? How do the environments surrounding exoplanets differ from those around the planets in our own solar system? How can the detailed knowledge acquired by the solar system community be applied in exoplanetary systems? How does space weather affect habitability? These were questions that were addressed in the splinter session "Cool stars and Space Weather", that took place on 9 Jun 2014, during the Cool Stars 18 meeting. In this paper, we present a summary of the contributions made to this session.