A $\Delta R\sim 9.5$ mag Super Flare of An Ultracool Star Detected by $\text{SVOM/GWAC}$ System

TL;DR

This paper reports the detection of an extremely powerful super flare on an ultracool star, highlighting the importance of high-cadence monitoring and rapid follow-up to understand stellar magnetic activity.

Contribution

It presents the first detailed observation of a super flare with unprecedented amplitude and energy on an ultracool star, including a new flare component near the peak.

Findings

Flare amplitude of $ riangle R extasciitilde 9.5$ mag.

Bolometric energy estimated at $(5.56-9.25) imes10^{34}$ ergs.

Detection of a new flare component with steep decay.

Abstract

In this paper, we report the detection and follow-ups of a super stellar flare GWAC\,181229A with an amplitude of $\Delta R\sim$9.5 mag on a M9 type star by $\text{SVOM/GWAC}$ and the dedicated follow-up telescopes. The estimated bolometric energy $E_{bol}$ is $(5.56-9.25)\times10^{34}$ ergs, which places the event to be one of the most powerful flares on ultracool stars. The magnetic strength is inferred to be (3.6-4.7) kG. Thanks to the sampling with a cadence of 15 seconds, a new component near the peak time with a very steep decay is detected in the $R$-band light curve, followed by the two-component flare template given by Davenport et al. (2014). An effective temperature of $5340\pm40$ K is measured by a blackbody shape fitting to the spectrum at the shallower phase during the flare. The filling factors of the flare are estimated to be $\sim$30\% and 19\% at the peak time and at 54 min after the first detection. The detection of the particular event with large amplitude, huge-emitted energy and a new component demonstrates that a high cadence sky monitoring cooperating with fast follow-up observations is very essential for understanding the violent magnetic activity.