Multi-instrumental view of magnetic fields and activity of ϵ Eridani with SPIRou, NARVAL, and TESS

¹ Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, CNES, 14 avenue Edouard Belin, 31400 Toulouse, France
e-mail: ppetit@irap.omp.eu
² Department of Physics & Space Science, Royal Military College of Canada, PO Box 17000 Station Forces, Kingston, ON, K7K 0C6, Canada
³ Departamento de Física Teórica e Experimental, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, RN 59072-970, Brazil
⁴ Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
⁵ Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, Justus-von-Liebig-Weg 3, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
⁶ University of Southern Queensland, Centre for Astrophysics, Toowoomba, QLD 4350, Australia
⁷ Laboratoire Univers et Particules de Montpellier, Université de Montpellier, CNRS, 34095, France
⁸ School of Physics, Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin, Dublin-2, Ireland

Received: 30 November 2020
Accepted: 5 January 2021

Abstract

Aims. We report on observations of the active K2 dwarf ϵ Eridani based on contemporaneous SPIRou, NARVAL and TESS data obtained over two months in late 2018, when the activity of the star was reported to be in a non-cyclic phase.

Methods. Near-infrared (NIR) spectropolarimetry was obtained using SPIRou over four nights in late September, while visible spectropolarimetry was collected with NARVAL over 20 nights, spread between 18 September and 07 November. We first recovered the fundamental parameters of the target from both visible and NIR spectral fitting. The large-scale magnetic field was investigated from polarimetric data. From unpolarized spectra, we estimated the total magnetic flux through Zeeman broadening of magnetically sensitive NIR lines and the chromospheric emission using the CaII H&K lines. The photometric monitoring, secured with TESS between 19 October and 15 November, is modelled with pseudo-periodic Gaussian process regression.

Results. Fundamental parameters of ϵ Eridani derived from visible and NIR wavelengths provide us with consistent results, which also agree with published values. We report a progressive increase of macroturbulence towards larger NIR wavelengths. Zeeman broadening of individual lines highlights an unsigned surface magnetic field B_mono = 1.90 ± 0.13 kG, with a filling factor f = 12.5 ± 1.7% (unsigned magnetic flux Bf = 237 ± 36 G). The large-scale magnetic field geometry, chromospheric emission and broadband photometry display clear signs of non-rotational evolution over the course of data collection. Characteristic decay times deduced from the light curve and longitudinal field fall in the range 30–40 days, while the characteristic timescale of surface differential rotation, as derived through the evolution of the magnetic geometry, is equal to 57 ± 5 days. The large-scale magnetic field exhibits a combination of properties not observed previously for ϵ Eridani, with a surface field among the weakest previously reported, but this field is also mostly axisymmetric, and is dominated by a toroidal component.