paper

The Density of Coronal Plasma in Active Stellar Coronae

arXiv:astro-ph/0405019 · doi:10.1086/422355

Abstract

We have analyzed high-resolution X-ray spectra of a sample of 22 active stars observed with the High Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer on {\em Chandra} in order to investigate their coronal plasma density. Densities where investigated using the lines of the He-like ions O VII, Mg XI, and Si XIII. While Si XIII lines in all stars of the sample are compatible with the low-density limit, Mg XI lines betray the presence of high plasma densities ( cm) for most of the sources with higher X-ray luminosity ( erg/s); stars with higher and tend to have higher densities at high temperatures. Ratios of O VII lines yield much lower densities of a few cm, indicating that the ``hot'' and ``cool'' plasma resides in physically different structures. Our findings imply remarkably compact coronal structures, especially for the hotter plasma emitting the Mg XI lines characterized by coronal surface filling factor, , ranging from to , while we find values from a few up to for the cooler plasma emitting the O VII lines. We find that approaches unity at the same stellar surface X-ray flux level as solar active regions, suggesting that these stars become completely covered by active regions. At the same surface flux level, is seen to increase more sharply with increasing surface flux. These results appear to support earlier suggestions that hot K plasma in active coronae arises from flaring activity, and that this flaring activity increases markedly once the stellar surface becomes covered with active regions.

53 pages, 19 figures, accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal. A version of the paper with higher quality figures is available from http://www.astropa.unipa.it/Library/preprint.html

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