Spectroscopic and photometric analysis of 21 chromospherically active variables: activity cycles and differential rotation

TL;DR

This study analyzes magnetic activity, rotation, and cycle properties of 21 cool giant and sub-giant stars using spectroscopy and long-term photometry, revealing correlations and differences with main sequence stars and the Sun.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of activity cycles and differential rotation in a sample of evolved stars, highlighting key relationships and differences with main sequence stars.

Findings

Positive correlation between inverse rotation period and cycle period.

No correlation between cycle length and surface shear.

Surface shear is larger in main sequence stars for a given rotation period.

Abstract

We investigate magnetic activity properties of 21 stars via medium resolution optical spectra and long-term photometry. Applying synthetic spectrum fitting method, we find that all targets are cool giant or sub-giant stars possessing overall [M/H] abundances between $0$ and $-0.5$. We find that six of these targets exhibit only linear trend in mean brightness while eight of them clearly shows cyclic mean brightness variation. Remaining seven target appear to exhibit cyclic mean brightness variation but this can not be confirmed due to the long time scales of the predicted cycle compared to the current time range of the photometric data. We further determine seasonal photometric periods and compute average photometric period of each target. Analysed sample in this study provides a quantitative representation of a positive linear correlation between the inverse of the rotation period and the cycle period normalized to the rotation period, on the log-log scale. We also observe no correlation between the activity cycle length and the relative surface shear, indicating that the activity cycle must be driven by a parameter rather than the differential rotation. Our analyses show that the relative surface shear is positively correlated with the rotation period and there is a noticeable separation between main sequence stars and our sample. Compared to our sample, the relative surface shear of a main sequence star is larger for a given rotation period. However, dependence of the relative surface shear on the rotation period appears stronger for our sample. Analysis of the current photometric data indicates that the photometric properties of the observed activity cycles in 8 targets seem dissimilar to the sunspot cycle.