The coronal temperatures of low-mass main-sequence stars

Author(s)
Colin Johnstone, Manuel Güdel
Abstract

Aims: We study the X-ray emission of low-mass main-sequence stars to derive a reliable general scaling law between coronal temperature and the level of X-ray activity.

Methods: We collect ROSAT measurements of hardness ratios and X-ray luminosities for a large sample of stars to derive which stellar X-ray emission parameter is most closely correlated with coronal temperature. We calculate average coronal temperatures for a sample of 24 low-mass main-sequence stars with measured emission measure distributions (EMDs) collected from the literature. These EMDs are based on high-resolution X-ray spectra measured by XMM-Newton and Chandra.

Results: We confirm that there is one universal scaling relation between coronal average temperature and surface X-ray flux, FX, that applies to all low-mass main-sequence stars. We find that coronal temperature is related to FX by T̅cor = 0.11 FX0.26, where T̅cor is in MK and FX is in erg s-1 cm-2.

Organisation(s)
Department of Astrophysics
Journal
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Volume
578
No. of pages
4
ISSN
0004-6361
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201425283
Publication date
06-2015
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
103003 Astronomy, 103004 Astrophysics
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Astronomy and Astrophysics, Space and Planetary Science
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/the-coronal-temperatures-of-lowmass-mainsequence-stars(946d2e39-378c-44e4-b1c0-1f8814fe99fe).html