Light Echoes of Time-resolved Flares and Application to Kepler Data

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new model for light echoes from extended stellar flares and tests it on Kepler data to explore protoplanetary disks, demonstrating potential and limitations of this method.

Contribution

The paper develops a novel model for light echoes from extended flares and applies it to Kepler data to estimate disk parameters, advancing the study of protoplanetary disks in the time domain.

Findings

One star's disk parameters matched known values.

High stellar variability complicates echo detection.

Model shows promise but has limitations with variable stars.

Abstract

Light echoes of stellar flares provide an intriguing option for exploring protoplanetary disks in young stellar systems. Previous work on light echoes of circumstellar disks made use of delta-function flares for modeling. We present a new model that incorporates echoes produced by extended, time-resolved flares. We then test this model on known disk-bearing stars with Kepler K2 data by estimating disk parameters from possible echo signals. We focus on two stars; the first appears to be a good candidate for use of this echo model, which predicts disk parameters that are consistent with known values. The second star turns out to be more problematic as a result of high brightness variability in its post-peak lightcurve. These two cases show both the promise and limitations of light echoes as a tool for exploring protoplanetary disks in the time domain