English

A simple model for spectroscopic analyses of active stars

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2024-11-11 v1

Abstract

Spectroscopic analyses of young late-type stars suffer from systematic inaccuracies, typically under-estimating metallicities but over-estimating abundances of certain elements including oxygen and barium. Effects are stronger in younger and cooler stars, and recent evidence specifically indicates a connection to the level of chromospheric activity. We present here a two-component spectroscopic model representing a non-magnetic baseline plus a magnetic spot, and analyse the resulting synthetic spectra of young solar analogues using a standard spectroscopic technique. For a moderately active star with solar parameters and chromospheric activity index log R'_HK = -4.3 (~100 Myr), we predict that [Fe/H] is underestimated by 0.06 dex while v_mic is overestimated by 0.2 km/s; for higher activity levels we predict effects as large as 0.2 dex and 0.7 km/s. Predictions are in agreement with literature data on solar twins, and indicate that the model is a plausible explanation to the observed effects. The model is simple enough that it can be included in spectroscopic packages with only changes to the underlying spectrum synthesis modules, if a log R'_HK value is provided.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2411.05314,
  title  = {A simple model for spectroscopic analyses of active stars},
  author = {T. Nordlander and M. Baratella and L. Spina and V. D'Orazi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.05314},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

10 pages. Accepted for publication in MNRAS