The Impact of Starspots on Mass and Age Estimates During The Pre-Main Sequence

Abstract

We investigate the impact of starspots on the evolution of late-type stars during the pre-main sequence (pre-MS). We find that heavy spot coverage increases the radii of stars by 4-10%, consistent with inflation factors in eclipsing binary systems, and suppresses the rate of pre-MS lithium depletion, leading to a dispersion in zero-age MS Li abundance (comparable to observed spreads) if a range of spot properties exist within clusters from 3-10 Myr. This concordance with data implies that spots induce a range of radii at fixed mass during the pre-MS. These spots decrease the luminosity and $T_{\mathrm{eff}}$ of stars, leading to a displacement on the HR diagram. This displacement causes isochrone derived masses and ages to be systematically under-estimated, and can lead to the spurious appearance of an age spread in a co-eval population.

To appear in "Young Stars and Planets Near the Sun", Proceedings of IAU Symposium No. 314 (Cambridge University Press), J.H. Kastner, B. Stelzer, S.A. Metchev, eds

References in corpus (4)

• Reevaluating the Mass-Radius Relation for Low-Mass, Main Sequence Stars
• Rotation, inflation, and lithium in the Pleiades
• A Tale of Two Anomalies: Depletion, Dispersion, and the Connection Between the Stellar Lithium Spread and Inflated Radii on the Pre-Main Sequence
• The effect of starspots on the radii of low-mass pre-main sequence stars

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Metallicity and age effects on lithium depletion in solar analogues