Stellar Rotation and Structure of the $\alpha$ Persei Complex: When Does Gyrochronology Start to Work?

Abstract

On the pre-main-sequence, the rotation rates of Sun-like stars are dictated by the interplay between the protostellar disk and the star's contraction. At ages exceeding 100 million years (Myr), magnetic spin-down erases the initial stellar spin rate and enables rotation-based age dating (gyrochronology). The exact time at which the transition between these two regimes occurs depends on stellar mass, and has been challenging to empirically resolve due to a lack of viable calibration clusters. The $\alpha$ Persei open cluster ($t\approx 80$ Myr, $d\approx 170$ pc) may provide the needed calibrator, but recent analyses of the Gaia data have provided wildly varying views of its age and spatial extent. As such, we analyze a combination of TESS, Gaia, and LAMOST data to calibrate gyrochronology at the age of $\alpha$ Per and to uncover the cluster's true morphology. By assembling a list of rotationally-confirmed $\alpha$ Per members, we provide strong evidence that $\alpha$ Per is part of a larger complex of similarly-aged stars. Through kinematic back-integration, we show that the most diffuse components of $\alpha$ Per were five times closer together 50 Myr ago. Finally, we use our stellar rotation periods to derive a relative gyrochronology age for $\alpha$ Per of 67 $\pm$ 12% the age of the Pleiades, which yields 86 $\pm$ 16 Myr given current knowledge. We show that by this age, stars more massive than $\approx$0.8 M${}_{\odot }$ have converged to form a well-defined slow sequence.

arXiv commentAccepted to the Astronomical Journal

References in corpus (112)

• SciPy 1.0--Fundamental Algorithms for Scientific Computing in Python
• Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
• The Astropy Project: Building an inclusive, open-science project and status of the v2.0 core package
• The Gaia mission
• The Astropy Project: Sustaining and Growing a Community-oriented Open-source Project and the Latest Major Release (v5.0) of the Core Package
• The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite
• Embedded Clusters in Molecular Clouds
• MESA Isochrones and Stellar Tracks (MIST). I: Solar-Scaled Models
• Intrinsic Colors, Temperatures, and Bolometric Corrections of Pre-Main Sequence Stars
• The generalised Lomb-Scargle periodogram. A new formalism for the floating-mean and Keplerian periodograms
• galpy: A Python Library for Galactic Dynamics
• Improved Age Estimation for Solar-Type Dwarfs Using Activity-Rotation Diagnostics
• Understanding the Lomb-Scargle Periodogram
• Fast and scalable Gaussian process modeling with applications to astronomical time series
• New catalogue of optically visible open clusters and candidates
• Ages for illustrative field stars using gyrochronology: viability, limitations and errors
• How to Constrain Your M Dwarf: measuring effective temperature, bolometric luminosity, mass, and radius
• Global survey of star clusters in the Milky Way II. The catalogue of basic parameters
• On the rotational evolution of solar- and late-type stars, its magnetic origins, and the possibility of stellar gyrochronology
• A Gaia DR2 view of the Open Cluster population in the Milky Way
• Star Clusters Across Cosmic Time
• Stellar Diameters and Temperatures II. Main Sequence K & M Stars
• A comprehensive set of simulations studying the influence of gas expulsion on star cluster evolution
• Spectral Properties of Cool Stars: Extended Abundance Analysis of 1617 Planet Search Stars
• Gaia Early Data Release 3: The Gaia Catalogue of Nearby Stars
• A catalogue of white dwarfs in Gaia EDR3
• The APOGEE-2 Survey of the Orion Star Forming Complex II: Six-dimensional structure
• The Mass-Dependence of Angular Momentum Evolution in Sun-Like Stars
• Parallax Systematics and Photocenter Motions of Benchmark Eclipsing Binaries in Gaia EDR3
• Three-dimensional mapping of the local interstellar medium with composite data
• On the Galactic Disk Metallicity Distribution from Open Clusters I. New Catalogues and Abundance Gradient
• The White Dwarf Cooling Sequence of the Globular Cluster Messier 4
• Inferring probabilistic stellar rotation periods using Gaussian processes
• Stellar Winds on the Main-Sequence II: the Evolution of Rotation and Winds
• From Filamentary Networks to Dense Cores in Molecular Clouds: Toward a New Paradigm for Star Formation
• On the metallicity of open clusters. III. Homogenised sample
• Improved angular momentum evolution model for solar-like stars II. Exploring the mass dependence
• Rotation in the Pleiades with K2: I. Data and First Results
• Untangling the Galaxy I: Local Structure and Star Formation History of the Milky Way
• 3D maps of interstellar dust in the Local Arm: using $Gaia$, 2MASS and APOGEE-DR14
• UPMASK: unsupervised photometric membership assignment in stellar clusters
• Locking of the Rotation of Disk-Accreting Magnetized Stars
• Angular Momentum Loss from Cool Stars: An Empirical Expression and Connection to Stellar Activity
• A rotational and variability study of a large sample of PMS stars in NGC 2264
• When Do Stalled Stars Resume Spinning Down? Advancing Gyrochronology with Ruprecht 147
• Rotation of Low-Mass Stars in Upper Scorpius and Rho Ophiuchus with K2
• K2 rotation periods for low-mass Hyads and a quantitative comparison of the distribution of slow rotators in the Hyades and Praesepe
• The Ages of Early-Type Stars: Strömgren Photometric Methods Calibrated, Validated, Tested, and Applied to Hosts and Prospective Hosts of Directly Imaged Exoplanets
• The Kinematics of the Scorpius-Centaurus OB Association from Gaia DR1
• A Temporary Epoch of Stalled Spin-Down for Low-Mass Stars: Insights from NGC 6811 with Gaia and Kepler
• RACE-OC Project: Rotation and variability in young stellar associations within 100 pc
• 3D shape of Orion A from Gaia DR2
• BANYAN. XIII. A First Look at Nearby Young Associations with Gaia Data Release 2
• Poking the Beehive From Space: K2 Rotation Periods For Praesepe
• Keck Spectra of Brown Dwarf Candidates and a Precise Determination of the Lithium Depletion Boundary in the Alpha Persei Open Cluster
• Improving the open cluster census. I. Comparison of clustering algorithms applied to Gaia DR2 data
• Hunting for open clusters in Gaia EDR3: $628$ new open clusters found with OCfinder
• On the competing effect of wind braking and interior coupling in the rotational evolution of solar-like stars
• Extended stellar systems in the solar neighborhood -- V. Discovery of coronae of nearby star clusters
• Mass loss rates and the mass evolution of star clusters
• Embedded Stellar Clusters in the W3/W4/W5 Molecular Cloud Complex
• Stars with Photometrically Young Gaia Luminosities Around the Solar System (SPYGLASS) I: Mapping Young Stellar Structures and their Star Formation Histories
• The Physical Properties of Large-Scale Galactic Filaments
• A 5D view of the Alpha Per, Pleiades, and Praesepe clusters
• Stellar rotation periods from K2 Campaigns 0-18 -- Evidence for rotation period bimodality and simultaneous variability decrease
• Gaia EDR3 Reveals the Substructure and Complicated Star Formation History of the Greater Taurus-Auriga Star Forming Complex
• The Greater Taurus-Auriga Ecosystem I: There Is A Distributed Older Population
• Uncertainties on near-core mixing in red-clump stars: effects on the period spacing and on the luminosity of the AGB bump
• TESS reveals that the nearby Pisces-Eridanus stellar stream is only 120 Myr old
• A model for the formation of stellar associations and clusters from giant molecular clouds
• A New Look at an Old Cluster: The Membership, Rotation, and Magnetic Activity of Low-Mass Stars in the 1.3-Gyr-Old Open Cluster NGC 752
• Rotation in the Pleiades With K2: III. Speculations on Origins and Evolution
• Cluster Difference Imaging Photometric Survey. I. Light Curves of Stars in Open Clusters from TESS Sectors 6 & 7
• The Metallicity of the Pleiades
• The Gaia-ESO Survey: open clusters in Gaia-DR1 - a way forward to stellar age calibration
• ML-MOC: Machine Learning (kNN and GMM) based Membership Determination for Open Clusters
• Revisiting the pre-main-sequence evolution of stars I. Importance of accretion efficiency and deuterium abundance
• Stellar Rotation in the Gaia Era: Revised Open Clusters Sequences
• Wide binaries are rare in open clusters
• NGTS clusters survey. I. Rotation in the young benchmark open cluster Blanco 1
• A Number of Nearby Moving Groups may be Fragments of Dissolving Open Clusters
• Stellar Rotation in the K2 Sample: Evidence for Modified Spindown
• The Effect of Binarity on Stellar Rotation - Beyond the Reach of Tides
• Rotation and Lithium Confirmation of a 500 Parsec Halo for the Open Cluster NGC 2516
• Rotation periods for cool stars in the open cluster NGC 3532. The transition from fast to slow rotation
• The $\mu$ Tau Association: A 60 Myr-Old Coeval Group at 150 pc from the Sun
• Lithium depletion boundary, stellar associations, and Gaia
• Stellar population astrophysics (SPA) with the TNG. Revisiting the metallicity of Praesepe (M44)
• The rotation period distribution of the rich Pleiades-age Southern open cluster NGC 2516. Existence of a representative zero-age main sequence distribution
• Discovery of a Transiting Adolescent Sub-Neptune Exoplanet with K2
• A statistical method to determine open cluster metallicities
• Tidal tails of open star clusters as probes to early gas expulsion I: A semi-analytic model
• Three K2 Campaigns Yield Rotation Periods for 1013 Stars in Praesepe
• Untangling the Galaxy. IV. Empirical Constraints on Angular Momentum Evolution and Gyrochronology for Young Stars in the Field
• wdwarfdate: A Python Package to Derive Bayesian Ages of White Dwarfs
• Gyrochronological dating of the stellar moving group Group X
• A $Gaia$ EDR3 search for tidal tails in disintegrating open clusters
• First phase space portrait of a hierarchical stellar structure in the Milky Way
• Membership lists for 431 open clusters in Gaia DR2 using extreme deconvolution gaussian mixture models
• A tale of caution: the tails of NGC 752 are much longer than claimed
• Tidal tails of open star clusters as probes to early gas expulsion II: Predictions for Gaia
• Stellar Spins in the Open Cluster NGC 2516
• From Stellar Coronæ to Gyrochronology: a theoretical and observational exploration
• Rotation periods for cool stars in the open cluster Ruprecht 147 (NGC 6774): Implications for gyrochronology
• Determining the seismic age of the young open cluster $\alpha$ Per using $\delta$ Scuti stars
• A 38 Million Year Old Neptune-Sized Planet in the Kepler Field
• The Ultramassive White Dwarfs of the Alpha Persei Cluster
• A Young, Low-Density Stellar Stream in the Milky Way Disk: Theia 456
• Discovery of two nearby post-T Tauri stellar associations
• The Rotation Period Distribution in the Young Open Cluster NGC 6709
• PIPS, an advanced platform for period detection in time series -- I. Fourier-likelihood periodogram and application to RR Lyrae Stars
• The 800pc long tidal tails of the Hyades star cluster: Possible discovery of candidate epicyclic overdensities from an open star cluster

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Signature of spin-down stalling in stellar magnetic activity. The case of the open cluster NGC 6811
• Confirming the Tidal Tails of the Young Open Cluster Blanco 1 with TESS Rotation Periods
• ChronoFlow: A Data-Driven Model for Gyrochronology
• Four ages of rotating stars in the rotation--activity relationship and gyrochronology
• A bird's eye view of stellar evolution through populations of variable stars in Galactic open clusters
• A transiting multi-planet system in the 61 million year old association Theia 116
• Lost Sisters Found: TESS and Gaia Reveal a Dissolving Pleiades Complex