Spatially resolving the thermally inhomogeneous outer atmosphere of the red giant Arcturus in the 2.3 micron CO lines

TL;DR

This study spatially resolves the inhomogeneous outer atmosphere of Arcturus using high-resolution interferometry, revealing extended CO layers beyond the photosphere that inform models of stellar atmospheres.

Contribution

It provides the first spatially resolved measurements of multiple CO layers in Arcturus, demonstrating the presence of extended molecular components not predicted by existing models.

Findings

Detection of two distinct CO layers above the photosphere.

The outer CO layer extends to about 2.6 stellar radii.

Inner CO layer properties align with previous spectroscopic analyses.

Abstract

The outer atmosphere of K giants shows thermally inhomogeneous structures consisting of the hot chromospheric gas and the cool molecular gas. We present spectro-interferometric observations of the multicomponent outer atmosphere of the well-studied K1.5 giant Arcturus (alpha Boo) in the CO first overtone lines near 2.3 micron. We observed Arcturus with the AMBER instrument at the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at 2.28--2.31 micron with a spectral resolution of 12000 and at projected baselines of 7.3, 14.6, and 21.8 m. The high spectral resolution of the VLTI/AMBER instrument allowed us to spatially resolve Arcturus in the individual CO lines. Comparison of the observed interferometric data with the MARCS photospheric model shows that the star appears to be significantly larger than predicted by the model. It indicates the presence of an extended component that is not accounted for by the current photospheric models for this well-studied star. We found out that the observed AMBER data can be explained by a model with two additional CO layers above the photosphere. The inner CO layer is located just above the photosphere, at 1.04 +/- 0.02 stellar radii, with a temperature of 1600 +/- 400 K and a CO column density of 10^{20 +/- 0.3} cm^-2. On the other hand, the outer CO layer is found to be as extended as to 2.6 +/- 0.2 stellar radii with a temperature of 1800 +/- 100 K and a CO column density of 10^{19 +/- 0.15} cm^-2. The properties of the inner CO layer are in broad agreement with those previously inferred from the spatially unresolved spectroscopic analyses. However, our AMBER observations have revealed that the quasi-static cool molecular component extends out to 2--3 stellar radii, within which region the chromospheric wind steeply accelerates.