Related papers: Stellar magnetism, winds and their effects on plan…
Magnetic fields are regarded as a crucial element for our understanding of stellar physics. They can be studied with a variety of methods which provide complementary - and sometimes contradictory - information about the structure, strength…
With the discovery of hundreds of exoplanets and a potentially huge number of Earth-like planets waiting to be discovered, the conditions for their habitability have become a focal point in exoplanetary research. The classical picture of…
Atmospheric escape of close-in exoplanets can be driven by high energy radiation from the host star. The planetary outflows interacting with the stellar wind may generate observable transit signals that depend on the strength of the stellar…
Stars interact with their planets through gravitation, radiation, and magnetic fields. I shall focus on the interactions between late-type stars with an outer convection zone and close-in planets, i.e., with an orbital semimajor axis…
The existence of starspots on late-type giant stars in close binary systems, that exhibit rapid rotation due to tidal locking, has been known for more than five decades. Photometric monitoring spanning decades has allowed studying the…
The evolution over time of the magnetic activity and the resulting X-ray and UV coronal and chromospheric emissions of main-sequence dG, dK, and dM stars with widely different ages are discussed. Young cool stars spin rapidly and have…
The current progress in the detection of terrestrial type exoplanets has opened a new avenue in the characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres and in the search for biosignatures of life with the upcoming ground-based and space missions.…
Context: Starbursts, and particularly their high-mass stars, play an essential role in the evolution of galaxies. The winds of massive stars not only significantly influence their surroundings, but the mass loss also profoundly affects the…
We present a brief overview of the theory of stellar winds with a strong emphasis on the radiation-driven outflows from massive stars. The resulting implications for the evolution and fate of massive stars are also discussed. Furthermore,…
The impact of strong magnetic fields B>10e13 G on the thermal evolution of neutron stars is investigated, including crustal heating by magnetic field decay. For this purpose, we perform 2D cooling simulations with anisotropic thermal…
In recent years, there has been interest in Earth-like exoplanets in the habitable zones of low mass stars ($\sim0.1-0.6\,M_\odot$). Furthermore, it has been argued that a large moon may be important for stabilizing conditions on a planet…
We report on the status of our spectropolarimetric observations of massive stars. During the last years, we have discovered magnetic fields in many objects of the upper main sequence, including Be stars, beta Cephei and Slowly Pulsating B…
We investigate the connections between the magnetic fields and the X-ray emission from massive stars. Our study shows that the X-ray properties of known strongly magnetic stars are diverse: while some comply to the predictions of the…
X-ray emission is ubiquitous among massive stars. In the last decade, X-ray observations revolutionized our perception of stellar winds but opened a Pandora's box of urgent problems. X-rays penetrating stellar winds suffer mainly continuum…
Planets in close-in orbits interact magnetically and tidally with their host stars. These interactions lead to a net torque that makes close-in planets migrate inward or outward depending on their orbital distance. We compare systematically…
The knowledge of stellar ages directly impacts the characterization of a planetary system as it puts strong constraints on the moment when the system was born. Unfortunately, the determination of precise stellar ages is a very difficult…
The Be star phenomenon is related to fast rotation, although the cause of this fast rotation is not yet clearly established. The basic effects of fast rotation on the stellar structure are reviewed: oblateness, mixing, anisotropic winds.…
Context. Stellar spin-down is the result of a complex process involving rotation, dynamo, wind and magnetism. Multi-wavelength surveys of solar-like stars have revealed the likely existence of relationships between their rotation, X-ray…
We consider the magnetic and spin evolution of isolated neutron stars assuming that the magnetic field is initially confined to the crust. The evolution of the crustal field is determined by the conductive properties of the crust which, in…
Magnetically confined winds of early-type stars are expected to be sources of bright and hard X-rays. To clarify the systematics of the observed X-ray properties, we have analyzed a large series of Chandra and XMM observations,…