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Desmond Dsouza

Publications and source records attributed to Desmond Dsouza.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Searching for rotational X-ray modulation on TIC 277539431

TIC 277539431, a fast rotating M7 dwarf, was detected to host the highest latitude flare to date at $81^\circ$. Magnetic activity like stellar flares occurring at high latitude indicate occurrence of coronal loops at these latitudes on fully-convective M dwarfs. In contrast, sunspots usually occur below $30^\circ$. In our study we look for modulation on the X-ray signal occurring due to occultation of coronal loops by the star due to stellar rotation. We report an updated rotation period for this star as $P_{\text{rot}}=273.593$ min based on TESS sectors 12, 37, 39, 64 and 65. We conducted $χ^2_{\textrm{red}}$ fits by varying the amplitude and the phase of a sinusoidally modulated signal derived from the new rotation period. We find no evidence of rotational modulation in the X-ray signal. This could be due to multiple scenarios, such as lack of a stable coronal loop during observation or the modulated signal being too weak, however given the dataset, individual scenarios cannot be distinguished.

astro-ph.SR

The corona of a fully convective star with a near-polar flare

In 2020, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) observed a rapidly rotating M7 dwarf, TIC 277539431, produce a flare at 81° latitude, the highest latitude flare located to date. This is in stark contrast to solar flares that occur much closer to the equator, typically below 30°. The mechanisms that allow flares at high latitudes to occur are poorly understood. We studied five Sectors of TESS monitoring, and obtained 36 ks of XMM-Newton observations to investigate the coronal and flaring activity of TIC 277539431. From the observations, we infer the optical flare frequency distribution, flare loop sizes and magnetic field strengths, the soft X-ray flux, luminosity and coronal temperatures, as well as the energy, loop size and field strength of a large flare in the XMM-Newton observations. We find that TIC 277539431's corona does not differ significantly from other low mass stars on the canonical saturated activity branch with respect to coronal temperatures and flaring activity, but shows lower luminosity in soft X-ray emission by about an order of magnitude, consistent with other late M dwarfs. The lack of X-ray flux, the high latitude flare, the star's viewing geometry, and the otherwise typical stellar corona taken together can be explained by the migration of flux emergence to the poles in rapid rotators like TIC 277539431 that drain the star's equatorial regions of magnetic flux, but preserve its ability to produce powerful flares.

astro-ph.SR

The first evidence of tidally induced activity in a brown dwarf-M dwarf pair: A Chandra study of the NLTT 41135/41136 system

The magnetic activity of low-mass stars changes as they age. The primary process decreasing the stellar activity level is the angular momentum loss via magnetized stellar wind. However, processes like tidal interactions between stars and their close companions may slow down the braking effect and the subsequent decrease of the activity level. Until now, the tidal impact of substellar objects like brown dwarfs on the evolution of their central stars has not been quantified. Here, we analyse the X-ray properties of NLTT 41135, an M dwarf tightly orbited by a brown dwarf, to determine the impact of tidal interactions between them. We find that NLTT 41135 is more than an order of magnitude brighter in the X-ray regime than its stellar companion NLTT 41136, also an M dwarf star, with whom it forms a wide binary system. To characterize the typical intrinsic activity scatter between coeval M dwarf stars, we analyse a control sample of 25 M dwarf wide binary systems, observed with XMM-Newton and Chandra telescopes and the eROSITA instrument onboard the Spectrum Röntgen Gamma satellite. The activity difference in the NLTT 41135/41136 system is a $3.44 σ$ outlier compared to the intrinsic activity scatter of the control systems. Therefore, the most convincing explanation for the observed activity discrepancy is tidal interactions between the M dwarf and its brown dwarf. This shows that tidal interactions between a star and a substellar companion can moderately alter the expected angular-momentum evolution of the star, making standard observational proxies for its age, such as X-ray emission, unreliable.

astro-ph.SR