Llamaradas Estelares: Modeling the Morphology of White-Light Flares

TL;DR

This paper introduces an improved analytic model for white-light stellar flares, based on a large sample from GJ 1243, which can accurately fit both simple and complex flare events and is applicable to various observational cadences.

Contribution

The authors develop a novel, continuous flare template using Gaussian processes and MCMC fitting, enhancing the modeling of stellar flare morphology and complexity.

Findings

The model accurately fits classical and multi-peaked flares.

It is effective across different observational cadences.

The flare template is publicly available on GitHub.

Abstract

Stellar variability is a limiting factor for planet detection and characterization, particularly around active M-type stars. Here we revisit one of the most active stars from the Kepler mission, the M4 star GJ 1243, and use a sample of 414 flare events from 11 months of 1-minute cadence light curves to study the empirical morphology of white-light stellar flares. We use a Gaussian process detrending technique to account for the underlying starspots. We present an improved analytic, continuous flare template that is generated by stacking the flares onto a scaled time and amplitude and uses a Markov Chain Monte Carlo analysis to fit the model. Our model is defined using classical flare events, but can also be used to model complex, multi-peaked flare events. We demonstrate the utility of our model using TESS data at the 10-minute, 2-minute and 20-second cadence modes. Our new flare model code is made publicly available on GitHub.