English

X-Ray and Ultraviolet Flares on AT Microscopii Observed by AstroSat

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2022-12-29 v1 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

We present observations of the active M-dwarf binary AT Mic (dM4.5e+dM4.5e) obtained with the orbital observatory AstroSat. During 20 ks of observations, in the far ultraviolet (130180130-180 nm) and soft X-ray (0.370.3-7 keV) spectral ranges, we detected both quiescent emission and at least five flares on different components of the binary. The X-ray flares were typically longer than and delayed (by 565-6 min) with respect to their ultraviolet counterparts, in agreement with the Neupert effect. Using X-ray spectral fits, we have estimated the parameters of the emitting plasma. The results indicate the presence of a hot multi-thermal corona with the average temperatures in the range of 715\sim 7-15 MK and the emission measure of (2.94.5)×1052\sim (2.9-4.5)\times 10^{52} cm3\textrm{cm}^{-3}; both the temperature and the emission measure increased during the flares. The estimated abundance of heavy elements in the corona of AT Mic is considerably lower than at the Sun (0.180.34\sim 0.18-0.34 of the solar photospheric value); the coronal abundance increased during the flares due to chromospheric evaporation. The detected flares had the energies of 10311032\sim 10^{31}-10^{32} erg; the energy-duration relations indicate the presence of magnetic fields stronger than in typical solar flares.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2211.03454,
  title  = {X-Ray and Ultraviolet Flares on AT Microscopii Observed by AstroSat},
  author = {Alexey A. Kuznetsov and Ruslan R. Karakotov and Kalugodu Chandrashekhar and Dipankar Banerjee},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.03454},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics