X-ray astronomy of stellar coronae

X-ray Astronomy of Stellar Coronae ⋆

X-ray emission from stars in the cool half of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is generally attributed to the presence of a magnetic corona that contains plasma at temperatures exceeding 1 million K. Coronae are ubiquitous among these stars, yet many fundamental mechanisms operating in their magnetic fields still elude an interpretation through a detailed physical description. Stellar X-ray astr...

Modeling X-ray emission from stellar coronae

By extrapolating from observationally derived surface magnetograms of low-mass stars we construct models of their coronal magnetic fields and compare the 3D field geometry with axial multipoles. AB Dor, which has a radiative core, has a very complex field, whereas V374 Peg, which is completely convective, has a simple dipolar field. We calculate global X-ray emission measures assuming that the ...

Slingshot prominences above stellar X-ray coronae

We present a new model for the coronal structure of rapidly rotating solar-type stars. The presence of prominences trapped in co-rotation 2 to 5 stellar radii above the stellar surface has been taken as evidence that the coronae of these stars must be very extended. The observed surface magnetic fields, however, cannot contain Xray emitting gas out to these distances. We present an alternative ...

Detection of X-ray Resonance Scattering in Active Stellar Coronae

An analysis of Lyman series lines arising from hydrogen-like oxygen and neon ions in the coronae of the active RS CVn-type binaries II Peg and IM Peg, observed using the Chandra High Resolution Transmission Grating Spectrograph, shows significant decrements in the Lyα/Lyβ ratios as compared with theoretical predictions and with the same ratios observed in similar active binaries. We interpret t...

Physics of Stellar Coronae