High Level Magnetic Activity Nature of an Eclipsing Binary KIC 12418816

TL;DR

This study combines spectroscopic and photometric data to analyze the magnetic activity of the young, similar-mass binary KIC 12418816, revealing strong spot activity and frequent stellar flares on both stars.

Contribution

It provides a detailed characterization of the magnetic activity, spot migration, and flare frequency in a young eclipsing binary, which is novel for this type of system.

Findings

Both stars show strong magnetic activity with spots and flares.

Spot migration period is approximately 0.72 years.

81 flares detected, with a subset being high-energy events.

Abstract

We present comprehensive spectroscopic and photometric analysis of the detached eclipsing binary KIC 12418816, which is composed of two very similar and young main sequence stars of spectral type K0 on a circular orbit. Combining spectroscopic and photometric modelling, we find masses and radii of the components as 0.88+-0.06 Msun and 0.84+-0.05 Msun, and 0.85+-0.02 Rsun, and 0.84+-0.02 Rsun for the primary and the secondary, respectively. Both components exhibit narrow emission features superposed on the cores of the Ca II H&K lines, while H alpha and H beta photospheric absoprtion is more completely infilled by broader emission. Very high precision Kepler photometry reveals remarkable sinusoidal light variation at out-of-eclipse phases, indicating strong spot activity, presumably on the surface of the secondary component. Spots on the secondary component appear to migrate towards decreasing orbital phases with a migration period of 0.72+-0.05 year. Besides the sinusoidal variation, we detect 81 flares, and find that both components possess flare activity. Our analysis shows that 25 flares among 81 come exhibit very high energies with lower frequency, while the rest of them are very frequent with lower energies.