X-ray activity cycle on the active ultra-fast rotator AB Doradus A?

Implication of correlated coronal and photometric variability

Hamburger Sternwarte, University of Hamburg, Gojenbergsweg 112, 21029 Hamburg, Germany
e-mail: lalitha.sairam@hs.uni-hamburg.de

Received: 17 April 2013
Accepted: 21 October 2013

Abstract

Context. Although chromospheric activity cycles have been studied in a larger number of late-type stars for quite some time, very little is known about coronal activity-cycles in other stars and their similarities or dissimilarities with the solar activity cycle.

Aims. While it is usually assumed that cyclic activity is present only in stars of low to moderate activity, we investigate whether the ultra-fast rotator AB Dor, a K dwarf exhibiting signs of substantial magnetic activity in essentially all wavelength bands, exhibits an X-ray activity cycle in analogy to its photospheric activity cycle of about 17 years and possible correlations between these bands.

Methods. We analysed the combined optical photometric data of AB Dor A, which span ~35 years. Additionally, we used ROSAT and XMM-Newton X-ray observations of AB Dor A to study the long-term evolution of magnetic activity in this active K dwarf over nearly three decades and searched for X-ray activity cycles and related photometric brightness changes.

Results. AB Dor A exhibits photometric brightness variations ranging between 6.75 < V_mag ≤ 7.15 while the X-ray luminosities range between 29.8 < log L_X [erg/s] ≤   30.2 in the 0.3–2.5 keV. As a very active star, AB Dor A shows frequent X-ray flaring, but in the long XMM-Newton observations a kind of basal state is attained very often. This basal state probably varies with the photospheric activity-cycle of AB Dor A, which has a period of ~17 years, but the X-ray variability amounts at most to a factor of ~2, which is, much lower than the typical cycle amplitudes found on the Sun.