Non-gaussian statistics and stellar rotational velocities of main sequence field stars
Abstract
In this letter we study the observed distributions of rotational velocity in a sample of more than 16,000 nearby F and G dwarf stars, magnitude complete and presenting high precision measurements. We show that the velocity distributions cannot be fitted by a maxwellian. On the other hand, an analysis based on both Tsallis and Kaniadakis power-law statistics is by far the most appropriate statistics and give a very good fit. It is also shown that single and binary stars have similar rotational distributions. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that these two new statistics are tested for the rotation of such a large sample of stars, pointing solidly to a solution of the puzzling problem on the function governing the distribution of stellar rotational velocity
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0903.0868,
title = {Non-gaussian statistics and stellar rotational velocities of main sequence field stars},
author = {J. C. Carvalho and J. D. Jr. do Nascimento and R. Silva and J. R. De Medeiros},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0903.0868},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
10 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letters