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Tphysicsletters/6981/11/1490/466489.476tpl/Observations and detectability of young Suns’ flaring and CME activity in optical spectra

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Observations and detectability of young Suns’ flaring and CME activity in optical spectra

M. Leitzinger,1⋆ P. Odert,1 R. Greimel2 1 Institute of Physics, Department for Astrophysics and Geophysics, University of Graz, Universitätsplatz 5, 8010 Graz, Austria 1 RG Science, Schanzelgasse 17, 8010 Graz, Austria

Theoretical Physics Letters

2024 ° 04(06) ° 11-09

https://www.wikipt.org/tphysicsletters

DOI: 10.1490/774565.871tpl

Acknowledgement
This research was funded in whole, or in part, by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [10.55776/P30949, 10.55776/I5711]. For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission. This paper includes data collected by the TESS mission. Funding for the TESS mission is provided by the NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. MEES acknowledgements go to NASA HDEE Grants 80NSSC18K0064 and 80NSSC18K1658 for the data rescue effort, NASA Grant NAGW 1542 for the instrument fabrication. Support was also provided from Lockheed under NASA contract NAS8-37334 with Marshall Space Flight Center and the Yohkoh mission contract NAS8-40801. This work presents results from the European Space Agency (ESA) space mission Gaia. Gaia data are being processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC). Funding for the DPAC is provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia MultiLateral Agreement (MLA). The Gaia mission website is https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia. The Gaia archive website is https://archives.esac.esa.int/gaia.

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Abstract
The Sun’s history is still a subject of interest to modern astrophysics. Observationally constrained CME rates of young solar analogues are still lacking, as those require dedicated monitoring. We present medium resolution optical spectroscopic monitoring of a small sample of bright and prominent solar analogues over a period of three years using the 0.5m telescope at observatory Lustbühel Graz (OLG) of the University of Graz, Austria. The aim is the detection of flares and CMEs from those spectra. In more than 1700 hours of spectroscopic monitoring we found signatures of four flares and one filament eruption on EK Dra which has been reported in previous literature, but we complementarily extended the data to cover the latter phase. The other stars did not reveal detectable signatures of activity. For these non-detections we derive upper limits of occurrence rates of very massive CMEs, which are detectable with our observational setup, ranging from 0.1 to 2.2 day−1 , but these may be even smaller than the given rates considering observational biases. Furthermore, we investigate the detectability of flares/CMEs in OLG spectra by utilizing solar 2D Hα spectra from MEES solar observatory. We find that solar-sized events are not detectable within our observations. By scaling up the size of the solar event, we show that with a fractional active region area of 18% in residual spectra and 72% in equivalent width time series derived from the same residuals that solar events are detectable if they had hypothetically occurred on HN Peg.

Introduction
The Sun has a 4.6 Gyr long history which was subject to numerous investigations. The “Sun in time” program (see e.g. Dorren & Guinan 1994; Güdel 2007) was founded to investigate the Sun’s history in great detail. The radiation environment was reconstructed from X-rays (e.g. Dorren et al. 1995; Güdel et al. 1997b; Telleschi et al. 2005; Guinan 2017), EUV (e.g. Güdel et al. 1997a; Tu et al. 2015), FUV (e.g. Guinan et al. 2003), UV (e.g. Dorren & Guinan 1994; Dalton et al. 2019), optical (e.g. Messina & Guinan 2002) to radio (e.g. Güdel et al. 1994; Villadsen et al. 2014; Fichtinger et al. 2017). The spectral energy distributions of the Sun in time has been inferred (Ribas et al. 2005; Claire et al. 2012) and also the solar wind in time has been investigated (Ó Fionnagáin & Vidotto 2018). Every study focusing on solar analogues of different age may be attributed to the idea of the “Sun in time” program. Transient activity phenomena like flares and CMEs of the young Sun can be characterized with a significant observational effort only as those are detectable via time series observations which require much observing time. Here, especially the CME environment of the young Sun remains still relatively unknown. However, flare frequency distributions, as well as flare power laws depending on the stars X-ray luminosity of young solar analogue stars and others have been presented by Audard et al. (2000). Based on these power laws Odert et al. (2017) have deduced relations to estimate stellar CME occurrence rates. Prior to Odert et al. (2017), Aarnio et al. (2012) established a methodology to relate solar flare/CME relations with stellar flaring relations to infer stellar CMEs and their parameters. Drake et al. (2013) applied a similar approach and identified the problem of the unknown stellar flare-CME association rate, as extrapolating to higher energies while using solar relations leads to unrealistic high energy requirements which have been not observed yet. Osten & Wolk (2015) assumed energy partition between bolometric flare radiation and kinetic energy of the associated CME. These authors found mass loss rates comparable to previous studies. To explain energy budget problem discussed in Drake et al. (2013), Odert et al. (2017) suggested then that probably the whole flare-CME association rate may shift to larger energies.Stellar flares are a subject of ongoing research going back to the first half of the last century where stellar flares have been detected using ground-based observations (Joy & Humason 1949; Luyten 1949, followed by numerous studies). With satellite missions such as the Microvariability and Oscillations of Stars Telescope (MOST), Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits (CoRoT), Kepler and now with the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and in the near future also with the PLAnetary Transits and Oscillation of stars mission (PLATO) long-term photometric measurements were and will be accessible. This enabled statistical investigations of flares (see e.g. Balona 2015; Davenport 2016) and superflares ((E>1033 erg), see e.g. Maehara et al. 2012; Tu et al. 2020; Doyle et al. 2020; Tu et al. 2021; Okamoto et al. 2021). Flare-frequency distributions from TESS or Kepler are determined for more energetic flares, as usually such broadband photometric observations are insensitive to low energetic flares, as those simply leave no signature in a light-curve and are hidden in the noise.and are hidden in the noise. Stellar CMEs have been detected so far mainly on dMe stars (e.g. Houdebine et al. 1990; Guenther & Emerson 1997; Vida et al. 2016) using the method of Doppler shifted emission. This method uses the signature of plasma being ejected from a star. The signature, either appearing in absorption or emission is Doppler shifted by its projected velocity. This signature is often very pronounced in Balmer lines similarly to erupting filaments/prominences on the Sun. Optical spectroscopic monitoring programs to search for stellar CMEs using the method of Doppler shifted emission/absorption are often focused on dMe stars, as those are known to frequently flare and therefore also possibly may host CMEs. dG stars reveal also frequent flares if their X-ray luminosity is large, i.e. their activity level is high. However, for the detection of flares and CMEs, only stronger events, compared to dMe stars, may be detected, because of the higher continuum around Hα on those stars, or in other words a higher contrast is favorable for stellar CME detection using the method of Doppler-shifted emission/absorption in the Hα line.Only recently Namekata et al. (2021) presented the detection of a blue wing absorption in Hα during a superflare on the young solar analogue EK Dra, which the authors interpreted as an erupting filament. This event was simultaneously observed by two telescopes. Inoue et al. (2023) report on the detection of a high velocity blue-wing emission feature being interpreted by the authors as prominence eruption on the RS CVn system 1355 Ori, consisting of a K2-4 sub-giant and a G1 dwarf. Even more recently Namekata et al. (2024) focus again on EK Dra and present this time two prominence eruptions from which one has a projected bulk velocity being above the escape velocity of EK Dra and reveals a simultaneously observed candidate of coronal dimming. Using the method of Doppler shifted emission/absorption numerous candidate events have been found especially on dMe stars (e.g. Fuhrmeister et al. 2018; Vida et al. 2019). With this method only events with a projected bulk velocity being greater the stars’ escape velocity can be treated as eruptive events. It can be concluded that they are escaping from the star, as their true velocities can be even higher. But in numerous studies events with much smaller projected bulk velocities have been found which are much more difficult to interpret, as those may also originate from flaring plasma motions. To better interpret these spectral signatures investigating the Sun seen as a star may help. Instruments doing solar 2D spectroscopy are rare. In the 90ies of the last century MEES CCD provided Hα 2D spectroscopy of a cut-out of the solar-disk, in 2016 SMART/SDDI went into operation, doing full-disk multi-filter measurements resulting in a full-disk Hα profile, and only recently the Chinese Hα Solar Explorer (CHASE) providing full-disk Hα spectroscopy. MEES did Hα 2D Hα spectroscopy of solar cycles 22 and 23, so representing the past, whereas SMART/SDDI operated during the second half of cycle 24 and cycle 25 and CHASE beginning of cycle 25 up to now and hopefully also in the future. Spectroscopic Sun-as-a-star observations date back to the seventies of the last century (e.g. Livingston et al. 1981). Spatial integrated investigations of flares and erupting filaments have been presented by e.g. Den & Kornienko (1993); Ding et al. (2003); Ichimoto et al. (2017) and only recently progress has been made especially to understand Balmer line asymmetries related to erupting filaments/prominences (Namekata et al. 2021; Leitzinger et al. 2021; Namekata et al. 2022b; Otsu et al. 2022; Otsu & Asai 2024; Ma et al. 2024), as the Sun is the only star where we can actually see if a CME occurred in spatial and temporal vicinity to a filament/prominence eruption.

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Conclusion
We have presented optical spectroscopic monitoring from OLG of a small sample of young solar analogues. The observations revealed a very low level of detectable activity in Hα for the majority of stars in the sample except for EK Dra, the youngest star in the sample. In the period from January to April 2020 we have detected spectroscopically four flares and one episode of a filament eruption on EK Dra. The eruptive event has been also published by Namekata et al. (2021) who observed EK Dra at the same time. We have started observing when the eruptive event was already ongoing and captured the late stages of the eruption and the back falling material until the signature vanished. With our observations from OLG we could complement the erupting filament revealing its full evolution. In the typical exposure times used for spectroscopic monitoring at OLG (three minutes) we did not see the absorption signature caused by an eruptive filament on EK Dra. Building half hour averages revealed the absorption signatures. To estimate the detectability of solar activity events on our target stars, we spatially integrate over an active solar region revealing a complex event including flares, filament eruptions and back falling material observed by MCCD on MSO, similar to the event on EK Dra. As expected, when superimposing the spectral spatially integrated solar residuals of a solar event on a typical OLG spectrum of e.g. HN Peg then it remains invisible. One needs to increase the event area to make the signature visible in a spectrum. We need to scale the active region with factors resulting in a fractional area of the active region being 18% in residual spectra and 72% in equivalent width time series, respectively, to make the signature detectable above the noise. This behaviour is consistent with the fact that younger stars have larger active areas and therefore those can be detected in stellar spectra, whereas solar active regions are too small relative to the solar disk to be seen in full disk integrated light i.e. Sun-as-a-star observations. However, even on the other stars of the sample, activity signatures had been expected (from the Hα flare rates) but were not visible in the data. We therefore conclude that on solar-like stars already in the first few hundred of Myr the occurrence rates of more massive eruptive filaments/prominences decreases significantly. With our observational setup we might have detected massive events only. The intention of this study was the statistical determination of parameters of stellar eruptive filaments/prominences and their relation to flares. We found four flares and one filament eruption on one star. We know that the filament eruption was accompanied by a flare but the other four flares did not show signatures of filament eruptions. So one out of five flares on EK Dra shows an accompanying filament eruption, but this result is far from being statistically significant. Although the observational efforts have been increased in the past few years to detect stellar CMEs still the number of distinct events is low. We know many more candidate events, at least for the method of Doppler-shifted absorption/emission (e.g. Fuhrmeister et al. 2018; Vida et al. 2019). One way to obtain statistics is to focus on the numerous (few hundreds) candidate events and try to better understand those. This has already partly begun with the systematic investigation of spatially integrated solar, i.e. Sun-as-a-star signatures of flares and eruptive filaments, with the aim to better characterize stellar signatures of flares and eruptive filaments/prominences, including their temporal evolution (see e.g. Leitzinger et al. 2021; Namekata et al. 2021; Leitzinger 2022; Otsu et al. 2022). These studies used solar instruments capable of spatially resolved 2D spectroscopy (such as MCCD on Mees Solar Observatory/MSO) or full-disk photometry in various filters (Solar Dynamics Doppler Imager/SDDI on The Solar Magnetic Activity Research Telescope/SMART). With this study we have demonstrated that small-sized telescopes can be used to infer spectroscopic activity signatures on bright solar-like stars. From the spectroscopic monitoring presented in this study we have seen that CMEs, more energetic and massive than occurring on our present-day Sun, on few hundred Myr old solar analogues are not a frequent phenomenon.

References

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