First Zeeman Doppler imaging of a cool star using all four Stokes parameters

TL;DR

This pioneering Zeeman Doppler imaging study of a cool star using all four Stokes parameters reveals more complex and stronger magnetic fields than previous methods, improving understanding of stellar magnetic topologies.

Contribution

First ZDI analysis of a cool star employing all four Stokes parameters, demonstrating enhanced magnetic field detection and complexity compared to traditional methods.

Findings

Magnetic field topology is highly structured and more complex.

Including linear polarization doubles or quadruples surface magnetic features.

Total magnetic energy increases by 2.1-3.5 times with all four Stokes parameters.

Abstract

Magnetic fields are ubiquitous in active cool stars but they are in general complex and weak. Current Zeeman Doppler imaging (ZDI) studies of cool star magnetic fields chiefly employ circular polarization observations because linear polarization is difficult to detect and requires a more sophisticated radiative transfer modeling to interpret. But it has been shown in previous theoretical studies, and in the observational analyses of magnetic Ap stars, that including linear polarization in the magnetic inversion process makes it possible to correctly recover many otherwise lost or misinterpreted magnetic features. We have obtained phase-resolved observations in all four Stokes parameters of the RS CVn star II Peg at two separate epochs. Here we present temperature and magnetic field maps reconstructed for this star using all four Stokes parameters. This is the very first such ZDI study of a cool active star. Our magnetic inversions reveal a highly structured magnetic field topology for both epochs. The strength of some surface features is doubled or even quadrupled when linear polarization is taken into account. The total magnetic energy of the reconstructed field map also becomes about 2.1-3.5 times higher. The overall complexity is also increased as the field energy is shifted towards higher harmonic modes when four Stokes parameters are used. As a consequence, the potential field extrapolation of the four Stokes parameter ZDI results indicates that magnetic field becomes weaker at a distance of several stellar radii due to a decrease of the large-scale field component.