The X-ray activity of F stars with hot Jupiters: KELT-24 versus WASP-18

¹ INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo, Piazza del Parlamento 1, 90134 Palermo, Italy
e-mail: ignazio.pillitteri@inaf.it
² Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden St, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

Received: 15 November 2022
Accepted: 29 March 2023

Abstract

X-rays emitted by the coronae of solar-type stars are a feature present in up to late-A types during the main sequence phase. F stars, either with or without hot Jupiters, are usually X-ray emitters. The very low level of X-ray emission of the F5 star WASP-18 despite its relatively young age and spectral type is thus quite peculiar. In this paper we compare the X-ray activity of KELT-24 to that of WASP-18. KELT-24 is an F5 star nearly coeval to the Hyades stars that hosts a 5 M_Jup in a 5.6-day period orbit. The properties of the KELT-24 system are similar to, although less extreme than, those of WASP-18. We observed KELT-24 with XMM-Newton for a total of 43 ks in order to test if the X-ray activity of this star is depressed by the interaction with its massive hot Jupiter, as is the case of WASP-18. KELT-24 is detected in combined EPIC images with a high significance level. Its average coronal spectrum is well described by a cool component at 0.36 keV and a hotter component at 0.98 keV. We detected a flare with a duration of about 2 ks, during which the coronal temperature reached 3.5 keV. The unabsorbed quiescent flux in 0.3–8.0 keV is ∼1.33 × 10⁻¹³ erg s⁻¹ cm⁻², corresponding to a luminosity of 1.5 × 10²⁹ erg s⁻¹ at the distance of the star. The luminosity is well within the range of the typical X-ray luminosity of F stars in Hyades, which are coeval. We conclude that the activity of KELT-24 appears normal, as expected, and is not affected by any star–planet interaction. From the analysis of TESS light curves, we infer a distribution of optical flares for KELT-24 and WASP-18. Small optical flickering similar to flares is recognized in WASP-18 but at lower levels of energy and amplitude than in KELT-24. We discuss the causes of the low activity of WASP-18. Either WASP-18b could hamper the formation of a corona bright in X-rays in its host star through some form of tidal interaction, or the star has entered a minimum of activity similar to the solar Maunder minimum. This latter hypothesis would make WASP-18 among the few candidates showing such a quench of stellar activity.