Older and Colder: The impact of starspots on pre-main sequence stellar evolution

TL;DR

Starspots significantly influence pre-main sequence stellar evolution, causing inflation, luminosity reduction, and age/mass underestimations, which affect cluster age determinations and lithium abundance interpretations.

Contribution

This study introduces a modified stellar evolution model accounting for starspots, revealing their substantial impact on stellar properties and age estimates during pre-MS evolution.

Findings

Spotted stars are inflated by up to 10% during pre-MS.

Starspots cause underestimation of ages by 2-10 times at 3 Myr.

Lithium depletion is suppressed in spotted stars with radiative cores.

Abstract

We assess the impact of starspots on the evolution of late-type stars during the pre-main sequence (pre-MS) using a modified stellar evolution code. We find that heavily spotted models of mass 0.1-1.2\msun\ are inflated by up to $10$% during the pre-MS, and up to 4% and 9% for fully- and partially-convective stars at the zero-age MS, consistent with measurements from active eclipsing binary systems. Spots similarly decrease stellar luminosity and $T_{\rm eff}$, causing isochrone-derived masses to be under-estimated by up to a factor of $2 \times$, and ages to be under-estimated by a factor of 2-10$\times$, at 3 Myr. Consequently, pre-MS clusters and their active stars are systematically older and more massive than often reported. Cluster ages derived with the lithium depletion boundary technique are erroneously young by $\sim 15$% and $10$% at $30$ and $100$ Myr respectively, if 50% spotted stars are interpreted with un-spotted models. Finally, lithium depletion is suppressed in spotted stars with radiative cores, leading to a fixed-temperature lithium dispersion on the MS if a range of spot properties are present on the pre-MS. Such dispersions are large enough to explain Li abundance spreads seen in young open clusters, and imply a range of radii at fixed mass and age during the pre-MS Li burning epoch. By extension, this implies that mass, composition, and age do not uniquely specify the HR diagram location of pre-MS stars.