skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Young Stellar Inclinations Derived from Photometric and Spectroscopic Data
Understanding the inclinations of stellar spin axes is fundamental for studying planet formation and young binary star evolution. Obliquities between exoplanet orbits and their host stars can be traced to the misalignment of circumstellar disks and stellar rotation. In both single and binary systems, these misalignments can impact disk lifetimes and hinder the formation of planets altogether. Our goal is to derive the inclinations for single and binary systems in the Taurus star-forming region using a unique method that relies on estimates of stellar radii. We first identify rotation periods from TESS and K2 light curves for over a hundred sources. In order to test that these periods reflect the stellar rotation of CTTSs, we model the impact of accretion and other activity on our ability to extract the underlying sinusoidal signal we expect from rotation. We combine these data with projected stellar rotation velocities and effective temperatures derived by fitting a synthetic model grid to IGRINS spectra of our sources. Alongside all of these parameters, we use stellar ages and evolutionary track models from the literature to determine inclination. We present the details of this novel approach and the results from our derived distribution of stellar inclinations.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2109179
PAR ID:
10650130
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society
Date Published:
Volume:
57
Issue:
2
Page Range / eLocation ID:
357.11
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Abstract Systems with ultra-short-period (USP) planets tend to possess larger mutual inclinations compared to those with planets located farther from their host stars. This could be explained due to precession caused by stellar oblateness at early times when the host star was rapidly spinning. However, stellar oblateness reduces over time due to the decrease in the stellar rotation rate, and this may further shape the planetary mutual inclinations. In this work, we investigate in detail how the final mutual inclination varies under the effect of a decreasing J 2 . We find that different initial parameters (e.g., the magnitude of J 2 and planetary inclinations) will contribute to different final mutual inclinations, providing a constraint on the formation mechanisms of USP planets. In general, if the inner planets start in the same plane as the stellar equator (or coplanar while misaligned with the stellar spin axis), the mutual inclination decreases (or increases then decreases) over time due to the decay of the J 2 moment. This is because the inner orbit typically possesses less orbital angular momentum than the outer ones. However, if the outer planet is initially aligned with the stellar spin while the inner one is misaligned, the mutual inclination nearly stays the same. Overall, our results suggest that either USP planets formed early and acquired significant inclinations (e.g., ≳30° with its companion or ≳10° with its host star spin axis for Kepler-653 c) or they formed late (≳Gyr) when their host stars rotated slower. 
    more » « less
  2. Abstract We present stellar rotation periods for late K- and early M-dwarf members of the 4 Gyr old open cluster M67 as calibrators for gyrochronology and tests of stellar spin-down models. Using Gaia EDR3 astrometry for cluster membership and Pan-STARRS (PS1) photometry for binary identification, we build this set of rotation periods from a campaign of monitoring M67 with the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope’s MegaPrime wide-field imager. We identify 1807 members of M67, of which 294 are candidate single members with significant rotation period detections. Moreover, we fit a polynomial to the period versus color-derived effective temperature sequence observed in our data. We find that the rotation of very cool dwarfs can be explained by simple solid-body spin-down between 2.7 and 4 Gyr. We compare this rotational sequence to the predictions of gyrochronological models and find that the best match is Skumanich-like spin-down,Prot∝t0.62, applied to the sequence of Ruprecht 147. This suggests that, for spectral types K7–M0 with near-solar metallicity, once a star resumes spinning down, a simple Skumanich-like relation is sufficient to describe their rotation evolution, at least through the age of M67. Additionally, for stars in the range M1–M3, our data show that spin-down must have resumed prior to the age of M67, in conflict with the predictions of the latest spin-down models. 
    more » « less
  3. Heartbeat stars are a subclass of binary stars with short periods, high eccentricities, and phase-folded light curves that resemble an electrocardiogram. We start from the 𝐺𝑎𝑖𝑎 catalogs of spectroscopic binaries and use 𝑇𝐸𝑆𝑆 photometry to identify 112 new heartbeat star systems. We fit their phase-folded light curves with an analytic model to measure their orbital periods, eccentricities, inclinations, and arguments of periastron. We then compare these orbital parameters to the 𝐺𝑎𝑖𝑎 spectroscopic orbital solution. Our periods and eccentricities are consistent with the 𝐺𝑎𝑖𝑎 solutions for 85 % of the single-line spectroscopic binaries but only 20 % of the double-line spectroscopic binaries. For the two double-line spectroscopic binary heartbeat stars with consistent orbits, we combine the 𝑇𝐸𝑆𝑆 phase-folded light curve and the 𝐺𝑎𝑖𝑎 velocity semi-amplitudes to measure the stellar masses and radii with 𝙿𝙷𝙾𝙴𝙱𝙴 . In a statistical analysis of the HB population, we find that non-giant heartbeat stars have evolved off the main sequence and that their fractional abundance rises rapidly with effective temperature. 
    more » « less
  4. Abstract The rotation period of a star is an important quantity that provides insight into its structure and state. For stars with surface features like starspots, their periods can be inferred from brightness variations as these features move across the stellar surface. TESS, with its all-sky coverage, is providing the largest sample of stars for obtaining rotation periods. However, most of the periods have been limited to shorter than the 13.7 days TESS orbital period due to strong background signals (e.g., scattered light) on those timescales. In this study, we investigated the viability of measuring longer periods (>10 days) from TESS light curves for stars in the Northern Continuous Viewing Zone (NCVZ). We first created a reference set of 272 period measurements longer than 10 days for K and M dwarfs in the NCVZ using data from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) that we consider as the “ground truth” given ZTF’s long temporal baseline of 6+ years. We then used theunpopularpipeline to detrend TESS light curves and implemented a modified Lomb–Scargle (LS) periodogram that accounts for flux offsets between observing sectors. For 179 out of the 272 sources (66%), the TESS-derived periods match the ZTF-derived periods to within 10%. The match rate increases to 81% (137 out of 170) when restricting to sources with a TESS LS power that exceeds a threshold. Our results confirm the capability of measuring periods longer than 10 days from TESS data, highlighting the data set’s potential for studying slow rotators. 
    more » « less
  5. Abstract Wind Roche-lobe overflow (WRLOF) is a mass-transfer mechanism proposed by Mohamed and Podsiadlowski for stellar binaries wherein the wind acceleration zone of the donor star exceeds its Roche-lobe radius, allowing stellar wind material to be transferred to the accretor at enhanced rates. WRLOF may explain characteristics observed in blue lurkers and blue stragglers. While WRLOF has been implemented in rapid population synthesis codes, it has yet to be explored thoroughly in detailed binary models such asMESA(a 1D stellar evolution code), and over a wide range of initial binary configurations. We incorporate WRLOF accretion inMESAto investigate wide low-mass binaries at solar metallicity. We perform a parameter study over the initial orbital periods and stellar masses. In most of the models where we consider angular momentum transfer during accretion, the accretor is spun up to the critical (or breakup) rotation rate. Then we assume the star develops a boosted wind to efficiently reduce the angular momentum so that it could maintain subcritical rotation. Balanced by boosted wind loss, the accretor only gains ∼2% of its total mass, but can maintain a near-critical rotation rate during WRLOF. Notably, the mass-transfer efficiency is significantly smaller than in previous studies in which the rotation of the accretor is ignored. We compare our results to observational data of blue lurkers in M67 and find that the WRLOF mechanism can qualitatively explain the origin of their rapid rotation, their location on the H-R diagram, and their orbital periods. 
    more » « less