Fine structure of the chromospheric activity in Solar-type stars - The Halpha Line

Abstract

A calibration of H-alpha as both a chromospheric diagnostic and an age indicator is presented, complementing the works previously done on this subject (Herbig 1985, Pasquini & Pallavicini 1991. The chromospheric diagnostic was built with a statistically significant sample, covering nine years of observations, and including 175 solar neighborhood stars. Regarding the age indicator, the presence of stars for which very accurate ages are determined, such as those belonging to clusters and kinematic groups, lends confidence to our analysis. We also investigate the possibility that stars of the same age might have gone through different tracks of chromospheric decay, identifying - within the same age range - effects of metallicity and mass. These parameters, however, as well as age, seem to be significant only for dwarf stars, losing their meaning when we analyze stars in the subgiant branch. This result suggests that, in these evolved stars, the emission mechanism cannot be magnetohydrodynamical in nature, in agreement with recent models (Fawzy et al. 2002c, and references therein). The Sun is found to be a typical star in its H-alpha chromospheric flux, for its age, mass and metallicity. As a byproduct of this work, we developed an automatic method to determine temperatures from the wings of H-alpha, which means the suppression of the error inherent to the visual procedure used in the literature.

10 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. Nature of replacement: match astro-ph and ADS title (greek letter)

Cited by in corpus (36)

• The Ages of Stars
• Chromospheric activity as age indicator
• The Solar Twin Planet Search: The age - chromospheric activity relation
• Accurate and homogeneous abundance patterns in solar-type stars of the solar neighbourhood: a chemo-chronological analysis
• Evolution of the solar activity over time and effects on planetary atmospheres. II. kappa^1 Ceti, an analog of the Sun when life arose on Earth
• The Alpha Centauri Binary System: Atmospheric Parameters and Element Abundances
• On the difference between nuclear and contraction ages
• Calibration of the Halpha Age-Activity relation for M dwarfs
• Magnetic fields of young solar twins
• Lithium in M67: From the main sequence to the red giant branch
• A photometric and spectroscopic survey of solar twin stars within 50 parsecs of the Sun: I. Atmospheric parameters and color similarity to the Sun
• The age-mass-metallicity-activity relation for solar-type stars: Comparisons with asteroseismology and the NGC 188 open cluster
• Astrobiologically Interesting Stars within 10 parsecs of the Sun
• Revisiting the 16 Cygni planet host at unprecedented precision and exploring automated tools for precise abundances
• A method to estimate stellar ages from kinematical data
• An investigation of chromospheric activity spanning the Vaughan--Preston gap: impact on stellar ages
• Spectroscopic properties of cool Ursa Major group members
• A substellar component orbiting the F-star 30 Ari B
• Chromospherically Active Stars in the RAVE Survey. I. The Catalogue
• Chromospherically Active Stars in the RAVE Survey. II. Young dwarfs in the Solar neighborhood
• Fine structure of the age-chromospheric activity relation in solar-type stars I: The Ca II infrared triplet: Absolute flux calibration
• Hα photometry of low mass stars in 47 Tucanae: chromospheric activity and exotica
• Very Low-mass Stellar and Substellar Companions to Solar-like Stars from Marvels III: A Short-Period Brown Dwarf Candidate Around An Active G0Iv Subgiant
• A Combined Chandra and LAMOST Study of Stellar Activity
• A spectroscopically confirmed Gaia-selected sample of 318 new young stars within $\sim$200 pc
• $\mathrm{H}\alpha$ chromospheric activity of F-, G-, and K-type stars observed by the LAMOST Medium-Resolution Spectroscopic Survey
• Fine Structure of the Age-Chromospheric Activity Relation in Solar-Type Stars: II. H$\alpha$ Line
• Characterization of Exoplanet-Host Stars
• A New Age-Activity Relation For Solar Analogs that Accounts for Metallicity
• Astrophysics in 2005
• Faint solar analogs: at the limit of no reddening
• Eclipsing Binary Science Via the Merging of Transit and Doppler Exoplanet Survey Data - A Case Study With the MARVELS Pilot Project and SuperWASP
• Comparison of chromospheric diagnostics in a 3D model atmosphere: H$\alpha$ linewidth and mm continua
• Variability of H$\alpha$ chromospheric activity of solar-like stars revealed by the time-domain data of LAMOST Medium-Resolution Spectroscopic Survey
• The discontinuous nature of chromospheric activity evolution
• The SOL $\text{(Solar Origin and Life)}$ Project: Detailed characterization of candidates for the ZAMS and Subgiant stages