Measuring the rotation period distribution of field M dwarfs with Kepler

By A. McQuillan, Suzanne Aigrain, T. Mazeh. 2013

317 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We have analysed 10 months of public data from the Kepler space mission to measure rotation periods of main-sequence stars with masses between 0.3 and 0.55 M_sun. To derive the rotational period we introduce the autocorrelation function and show that it is robust against phase and amplitude modulation and residual instrumental systematics. Of the 2483 stars examined, we detected rotation periods in 1570 (63.2%), representing an increase of a factor ~ 30 in the number of rotation period determination for field M-dwarfs. The periods range from 0.37-69.7 days, with amplitudes ranging from 1.0-140.8 mmags. The rotation period distribution is clearly bimodal, with peaks at ~ 19 and ~ 33 days, hinting at two distinct waves of star formation, a hypothesis that is supported by the fact that slower rotators tend to have larger proper motions. The two peaks of the rotation period distribution form two distinct sequences in period-temperature space, with the period decreasing with increasing temperature, reminiscent of the Vaughan-Preston gap. The period-mass distribution of our sample shows no evidence of a transition at the fully convective boundary. On the other hand, the slope of the upper envelope of the period-mass relation changes sign around 0.55 M_sun, below which period rises with decreasing mass.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e84838b963f634bef7def89f82725e378653dbb9

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

Citations in the corpus

ROTATION PERIODS OF 34,030 KEPLER MAIN-SEQUENCE STARS: THE FULL AUTOCORRELATION SAMPLE (2014, methodology): “See McQuillan et al. (2013a) for a detailed comparison of the ACF method with Fourier-based approaches.”
A systematic search for close supermassive black hole binaries in the Catalina Real-time Transient Survey (2015, background): “McQuillan et al. (2013) discuss the robustness of the ACF for period detection in time series data.”
The Habitability of Planets Orbiting M-dwarf Stars (2016, background): “M dwarfs of a given mass (provided it is above the convective limit) exhibit a coherent spin-down (McQuillan et al., 2013, 2014).”
Rotation periods of 12 000 main-sequence Kepler stars: Dependence on stellar spectral type and comparison with v sin i observations (2013, methodology): “Figure 3 shows the distributions of stars that have been classified as M-type, found in this work and those by McQuillan et al. (2013).”
Rotation, differential rotation, and gyrochronology of active Kepler stars (2015, background): “This incident was first detected by McQuillan et al. (2013a) for the Kepler M dwarf periods, and confirmed later that the bimodality extends to hotter stars (Reinhold et al. 2013; McQuillan et al. 2014).”
Rotation and differential rotation of active Kepler stars (2013, methodology): “Around 0.5 there is no peak visible, clearly demonstrating that the auto-correlation method used in McQuillan et al. (2013) was less prone to alias periods than our method.”
Inferring probabilistic stellar rotation periods using Gaussian processes (2017, methodology): “A comparison of our GP rotation period measurements to those of McQuillan et al. (2013a).”
TRANSIT TIMING OBSERVATIONS FROM KEPLER. IX. CATALOG OF THE FULL LONG-CADENCE DATA SET (2016, methodology): “We searched for a stellar spot periodicity using the autocorrelation technique (e.g., McQuillan et al. 2013), and, if present, checked whether its frequency and/or one of its harmonics or aliases was equal to the TTV frequency.”
TRANSIT TIMING OBSERVATIONS FROM KEPLER. VIII. CATALOG OF TRANSIT TIMING MEASUREMENTS OF THE FIRST TWELVE QUARTERS (2013, methodology): “We searched for stellar spot periodicity using the autocorrelation technique (e.g., McQuillan et al. 2013), and, if present, checked whether its frequency, or one of its aliases, was equal to the TTV frequency.”
THE Hα EMISSION OF NEARBY M DWARFS AND ITS RELATION TO STELLAR ROTATION (2016, unknown): “…4 Engle et al. (2009) 2 Shkolnik et al. (2010) 5 Hartman et al. (2010) 6 Messina et al. (2011) 1 Hartman et al. (2011) 105 Kiraga (2012) 11 Mamajek et al. (2013) 1 Kiraga & Stȩpień (2013) 5 McQuillan et al. (2013) 6 Newton et al. (2016) 300 The sources for Hα measurements are listed in Table 3.”
Improved angular momentum evolution model for solar-like stars II. Exploring the mass dependence (2015, unknown): “By the age of the Sun, all the models presented here exhibit a nearly solid body rotation and have a surface velocity lower than the Sun’s, in agreement with the Kepler results (see McQuillan et al. 2013).”
KEPLER FLARES. I. ACTIVE AND INACTIVE M DWARFS (2014, background): “Our periods agree with previous determinations for GJ 1243 (Irwin et al. 2011; McQuillan et al. 2013) and GJ 1245B (Morin et al. 2010).”
CSI 2264: SIMULTANEOUS OPTICAL AND INFRARED LIGHT CURVES OF YOUNG DISK-BEARING STARS IN NGC 2264 WITH CoRoT and SPITZER—EVIDENCE FOR MULTIPLE ORIGINS OF VARIABILITY (2014, methodology): “McQuillan et al. (2013) showed that the autocorrelation function (ACF) is a particularly good tool for selecting the correct period from a non-sinusoidal light curve, by considering the larger of the first two local ACF peaks.”
STELLAR ROTATION PERIODS OF THE KEPLER OBJECTS OF INTEREST: A DEARTH OF CLOSE-IN PLANETS AROUND FAST ROTATORS (2013, methodology): “For a more detailed discussion of this process, see McQuillan et al. (2013).”
Rotation and magnetism of Kepler pulsating solar-like stars : Towards asteroseismically calibrated age-rotation relations (2014, methodology): “2 in McQuillan et al. 2013a).”
THE OCCURRENCE OF POTENTIALLY HABITABLE PLANETS ORBITING M DWARFS ESTIMATED FROM THE FULL KEPLER DATASET AND AN EMPIRICAL MEASUREMENT OF THE DETECTION SENSITIVITY (2015, unknown): “Second, we removed 63 stars that McQuillan et al. (2013) categorized as likely giants based on their stochastic photometric variability.”