Magnetic activity analysis for a sample of G-type main sequence \emph{Kepler} targets

TL;DR

This study investigates magnetic activity in G-type main sequence stars using Kepler light curves, revealing correlations between magnetic proxies and rotation periods, and highlighting the relationship between magnetic activity intensity and stellar rotation.

Contribution

The paper introduces a large-scale analysis of magnetic proxies in Kepler G-type stars, linking rotation periods with magnetic activity indicators for the first time.

Findings

Most stars show positive correlation between proxies.

Negative correlation stars have smaller light-curve variations.

Shorter rotation periods are associated with positive correlations.

Abstract

The variation of a stellar light curve owing to the rotational modulation by the magnetic features (starspots and faculae) on the star's surface can be used to investigate the magnetic properties of the host star. In this paper, we use the periodicity and magnitude of the light-curve variation, as two proxies, suggested by (He et al. 2015), to study the stellar magnetic properties for a large sample of G-type main sequence \emph{Kepler} targets, for which the rotation periods recently determined by (McQuillan et al. 2014). By analyzing the correlation between the two magnetic proxies, it is found that: (1) The two proxies are positively correlated for most of the stars in our sample, and the percentages of negative, zero, and positive correlation are $4.27\%$, $6.81\%$, and $88.91\%$, respectively; (2) Negative correlation stars cannot have large magnitude of light-curve variation; (3) with the increase of rotation period, the relative number of positive correlation stars decreases and the negative correlation one increases. These results indicate that the stars with shorter rotation period tend to have positive correlation between the two proxies, and a good portion of the positive correlation stars have larger magnitude of light-curve variation (and hence more intense magnetic activities) than the negative correlation stars.