Polarisation of a sample of late M dwarfs Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Morin J.
  2. Donati J.-F.
  3. Petit P.
  4. Delfosse X.
  5. Forveille T.
  6. Jardine M.M.
  7. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

We present here the final results of the first spectropolarimetric survey of a small sample of active M dwarfs, aimed at providing observational constraints on dynamo action on both sides of the full-convection threshold (spectral type M4). Our two previous studies (Donati et al. 2008. Cat. J/MNRAS/390/545; Morin et al., 2008, Cat. J/MNRAS/384/77) were focused on early and mid M dwarfs. The present paper examines 11 fully convective late M dwarfs (spectral types M5-M8). Tomographic imaging techniques were applied to time-series of circularly polarised profiles of 6 stars, in order to infer their large-scale magnetic topologies. For 3 other stars we could not produce such magnetic maps, because of low variability of the Stokes V signatures, but were able to derive some properties of the magnetic fields. We find 2 distinct categories of magnetic topologies: on the one hand strong axisymmetric dipolar fields (similar to mid M dwarfs), and on the other hand weak fields generally featuring a significant non-axisymmetric component, and sometimes a significant toroidal one. Comparison with unsigned magnetic fluxes demonstrates that the second category of magnetic fields shows less organization (less energy in the large scales), similarly to partly convective early M dwarfs. Stars in both categories have similar stellar parameters, our data do not evidence a separation between these 2 categories in the mass-rotation plane. We also report marginal detection of a large-scale magnetic field on the M8 star VB 10 featuring a significant toroidal axisymmetric component, whereas no field is detectable on VB 8 (M7).

Keywords
  1. M stars
  2. Dwarf stars
  3. Magnetic fields
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2010MNRAS.407.2269M
See also HTML
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/MNRAS/407/2269
IVOA Identifier IVOID
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/MNRAS/407/2269
Document Object Identifer DOI

Access

Web browser access HTML
http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/MNRAS/407/2269
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/MNRAS/407/2269
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/MNRAS/407/2269
IVOA Table Access TAP
http://tapvizier.cds.unistra.fr/TAPVizieR/tap
Run SQL-like queries with TAP-enabled clients (e.g., TOPCAT).
IVOA Cone Search SCS
For use with a cone search client (e.g., TOPCAT).
http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/MNRAS/407/2269/stars?
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/MNRAS/407/2269/stars?
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/MNRAS/407/2269/stars?

History

2010-09-21T08:06:39Z
Resource record created
2010-09-21T08:06:39Z
Created
2017-12-05T05:10:27Z
Updated

Contact

Name
CDS support team
Postal Address
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
E-Mail
cds-question@unistra.fr