Connecting Flares and Transient Mass Loss Events in Magnetically Active Stars

TL;DR

This paper investigates the connection between stellar flares and transient mass loss events, suggesting that frequent energetic flares in young stars could lead to significant mass loss impacting planetary systems.

Contribution

It establishes a method to estimate stellar mass loss from flare energetics and demonstrates the potential large-scale effects on disk evolution and habitability.

Findings

Energy partitioning in stellar flares aligns with solar flare data.

Equipartition assumption enables mass loss estimation from flare rates.

Transient mass loss could significantly influence planetary system development.

Abstract

We explore the ramification of associating the energetics of extreme mag- netic reconnection events with transient mass loss in a stellar analogy with solar eruptive events. We establish energy partitions relative to the total bolometric radiated flare energy for different observed components of stellar flares, and show that there is rough agreement for these values with solar flares. We apply an equipartition between the bolometric radiated flare energy and kinetic energy in an accompanying mass ejection, seen in solar eruptive events and expected from reconnection. This allows an integrated flare rate in a particular waveband to be used to estimate the amount of associated transient mass loss. This approach is supported by a good correspondence between observational flare signatures on high flaring rate stars and the Sun, which suggests a common physical origin. If the frequent and extreme flares that young solar-like stars and low-mass stars experience are accompanied by transient mass loss in the form of coronal mass ejections, then the cumulative effect of this mass loss could be large. We find that for young solar-like stars and active M dwarfs, the total mass lost due to transient magnetic eruptions could have significant impacts on disk evolution, and thus planet formation, and also exoplanet habitability.