paper

A catalogue of rotation and activity in early-M stars

arXiv:1201.5774 · doi:10.1088/0004-6256/143/4/93

Abstract

We present a catalogue of rotation and chromospheric activity in a sample of 334 M dwarfs of spectral types M0--M4.5 populating the parameter space around the boundary to full convection. We obtained high-resolution optical spectra for 206 targets and determined projected rotational velocity, vsini, and Halpha emission. The data are combined with measurements of vsini in field stars of the same spectral type from the literature. Our sample adds 157 new rotation measurements to the existing literature and almost doubles the sample of available vsini. The final sample provides a statistically meaningful picture of rotation and activity at the transition to full convection in the solar neighborhood. We confirm the steep rise in the fraction of active stars at the transition to full convection known from earlier work. In addition, we see a clear rise in rotational velocity in the same stars. In very few stars, no chromospheric activity but a detection of rotational broadening was reported. We argue that all of them are probably spurious detections; we conclude that in our sample all significantly rotating stars are active, and all active stars are significantly rotating. The rotation-activity relation is valid in partially and in fully convective stars. Thus, we do not observe any evidence for a transition from a rotationally dominated dynamo in partially convective stars to a rotation-independent turbulent dynamo in fully convective stars; turbulent dynamos in fully convective stars of spectral types around M4 are still driven by rotation. Finally, we compare projected rotational velocities of 33 stars to rotational periods derived from photometry in the literature and determine inclinations for a few of them.

accepted for publication in AJ

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