Spectropolarimetry of Magnetic Chemically Peculiar Stars in the Orion OB1 Association

TL;DR

This study presents a spectropolarimetric survey of 56 chemically peculiar stars in Orion OB1, revealing 14 new magnetic stars, and shows that magnetic field strength decreases with stellar age, highlighting observational biases in young stars.

Contribution

It provides the first uniform spectropolarimetric data set for CP stars in Orion OB1, identifying new magnetic stars and analyzing magnetic field evolution with age.

Findings

14 new magnetic CP stars identified

Magnetic field strength decreases with stellar age

Magnetic occurrence is lower in very young stars due to observational bias

Abstract

We summarise the results of a spectropolarimetric survey of 56 chemically peculiar (CP) stars in the association of Orion OB1. We uniformly collected the observational material with the 6-m telescope BTA of the Special Astrophysical Observatory in 2013-2021. We identify 14 new magnetic CP stars with a longitudinal magnetic field exceeding approximately 500 G. The studied sample contains 31 magnetic stars or 55% of the whole CP population in Orion OB1. We show that the percentage of the magnetic CP stars and the field strength drops sharply with age. The mean longitudinal magnetic field in the young subgroup OB1b ($\log t=6.23$) is confidently almost three times stronger than in the older subgroups OB1a ($\log t=7.05$) and OB1c ($\log t=6.66$). In the Orion Nebula, a place with the youngest stellar population ($\log t < 6.0$), we detect the magnetic field only in 20% of CP stars. Such occurrence drastically differs from 83% of magnetic CP stars in the nearby subgroup OB1c. We consider this effect an observational bias caused by a significant portion of a very young population with the signatures of Herbig Ae/Be stars. The technique we used for magnetic measurements, and the quality of available data do not allow us to detect weak fields in the case of stars with a limited number of lines and emissions in spectra.