A Kepler Study of Starspot Lifetimes with Respect to Light Curve Amplitude and Spectral Type

TL;DR

This study analyzes Kepler data to explore how starspot lifetimes relate to their size and the star's temperature, revealing that cooler stars have longer-lasting spots and that spot size correlates with decay time.

Contribution

It introduces a method to measure starspot decay timescales from light curves and demonstrates the dependence of these timescales on stellar temperature and rotation period.

Findings

Starspot decay time correlates with inferred spot size.

Cooler stars have longer-lasting starspots.

The Sun's activity level is typical for its spectral type.

Abstract

Wide-field high precision photometric surveys such as Kepler have produced reams of data suitable for investigating stellar magnetic activity of cooler stars. Starspot activity produces quasi-sinusoidal light curves whose phase and amplitude vary as active regions grow and decay over time. Here we investigate, firstly, whether there is a correlation between the size of starspots - assumed to be related to the amplitude of the sinusoid - and their decay timescale and, secondly, whether any such correlation depends on the stellar effective temperature. To determine this, we computed the autocorrelation functions of the light curves of samples of stars from Kepler and fitted them with apodised periodic functions. The light curve amplitudes, representing spot size were measured from the root-mean-squared scatter of the normalised light curves. We used a Monte Carlo Markov Chain to measure the periods and decay timescales of the light curves. The results show a correlation between the decay time of starspots and their inferred size. The decay time also depends strongly on the temperature of the star. Cooler stars have spots that last much longer, in particular for stars with longer rotational periods. This is consistent with current theories of diffusive mechanisms causing starspot decay. We also find that the Sun is not unusually quiet for its spectral type - stars with solar-type rotation periods and temperatures tend to have (comparatively) smaller starspots than stars with mid-G or later spectral types.