English

Could the Magnetic Star HD 135348 Possess a Rigidly Rotating Magnetosphere?

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2022-01-10 v1

Abstract

We report the detection and characterization of a new magnetospheric star, HD 135348, based on photometric and spectropolarimetric observations. The TESS light curve of this star exhibited variations consistent with stars known to possess rigidly rotating magnetospheres (RRMs), so we obtained spectropolarimetric observations using the Robert Stobie Spectrograph (RSS) on the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) at four different rotational phases. From these observations, we calculated the longitudinal magnetic field of the star Bz\langle B_z \rangle, as well as the Alfv\'en and Kepler radii, and deduced that this star contains a centrifugal magnetosphere. However, an archival spectrum does not exhibit the characteristic "double-horned" emission profile for Hα\alpha and the Brackett series that has been observed in many other RRM stars. This could be due to the insufficient rotational phase coverage of the available set of observations, as the spectra of these stars significantly vary with the star's rotation. Our analysis underscores the use of TESS in photometrically identifying magnetic star candidates for spectropolarimetric follow-up using ground-based instruments. We are evaluating the implementation of a machine learning classifier to search for more examples of RRM stars in TESS data.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2112.07676,
  title  = {Could the Magnetic Star HD 135348 Possess a Rigidly Rotating Magnetosphere?},
  author = {Rahul Jayaraman and Swetlana Hubrig and Daniel L. Holdsworth and Markus Schöller and Silva Järvinen and Donald W. Kurtz and George R. Ricker},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.07676},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

10 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in ApJL