paper

Tuning the Exo-Space Weather Radio for Stellar Coronal Mass Ejections

arXiv:2004.05379 · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab88a3

Abstract

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) on stars other than the Sun have proven very difficult to detect. One promising pathway lies in the detection of type II radio bursts. Their appearance and distinctive properties are associated with the development of an outward propagating CME-driven shock. However, dedicated radio searches have not been able to identify these transient features in other stars. Large Alfvén speeds and the magnetic suppression of CMEs in active stars have been proposed to render stellar eruptions "radio-quiet". Employing 3D magnetohydrodynamic simulations, we study here the distribution of the coronal Alfvén speed, focusing on two cases representative of a young Sun-like star and a mid-activity M-dwarf (Proxima Centauri). These results are compared with a standard solar simulation and used to characterize the shock-prone regions in the stellar corona and wind. Furthermore, using a flux-rope eruption model, we drive realistic CME events within our M-dwarf simulation. We consider eruptions with different energies to probe the regimes of weak and partial CME magnetic confinement. While these CMEs are able to generate shocks in the corona, those are pushed much farther out compared to their solar counterparts. This drastically reduces the resulting type II radio burst frequencies down to the ionospheric cutoff, which impedes their detection with ground-based instrumentation.

arXiv comment13 Pages, 6 Figures, 2 Tables. Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal

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