Flaring Activities of Fast Rotating Stars have Solar-like Latitudinal Distribution

TL;DR

This study investigates the latitudinal distribution of flaring activity in fast rotating stars and finds it similar to the Sun's, suggesting a common solar-like dynamo process across different stellar types.

Contribution

It introduces a new method to determine stellar latitudinal active region distribution using flaring activity and shows that fast rotating stars share a similar distribution with the Sun.

Findings

Fast rotating stars have a solar-like latitudinal distribution of active regions.

The solar-like dynamo process applies to fast rotating stars.

The method provides new constraints on stellar dynamo theories.

Abstract

The dynamo theory has always been one of the biggest mysteries in stellar physics. One key reason for its uncertainty is poor knowledge of the dynamo process on stars except the Sun. The most important observation feature of solar dynamo is that active regions only appear at low latitudes, which provides a crucial constraint to the dynamo theory, while Doppler imaging, the current technique to spatially resolve stellar hemisphere, is difficult to distinguish the equatorial region . Hence, the latitudinal distribution of active regions (LDAR) of stars is ambiguous and controversial, mainly due to the limit of the current technique for spatially resolving the stellar surface. Fast rotating stars, which are young and active, are thought to operate with a different dynamo process than the Sun. We study their LDAR and compare them with the Sun to reveal the underlying dynamo process. Flares are drastic and observational activity events, which occur in active regions. Here, we propose a new method to study how the apparent flaring activity varies with respect to the inclination to determine the LDAR of fast rotating stars.We find that the LDAR of fast rotating stars is consistent with that of the Sun, contrary to expectations. Our results provide a crucial constraint to stellar dynamo, indicating that the solar-like dynamo also applies to fast rotating stars, even spanning different stages of their evolution.