Issue |
A&A
Volume 690, October 2024
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A228 | |
Number of page(s) | 13 | |
Section | Stellar structure and evolution | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202450670 | |
Published online | 10 October 2024 |
A study of the electrostatic properties of the interiors of low-mass stars: Possible implications for the observed rotational properties
1
Instituto Superior de Gestão, Rua Prof. Reinaldo dos Santos 46 A, 1500-552 Lisboa, Portugal
2
Centro de Astrofísica e Gravitação – CENTRA, Departamento de Física, Instituto Superior Técnico IST, Universidade de Lisboa – UL, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal
Received:
9
May
2024
Accepted:
8
August
2024
Context. In the partially ionized material of stellar interiors, the strongest forces acting on electrons and ions are the Coulomb interactions between charges. The dynamics of the plasma as a whole depend on the magnitudes of the average electrostatic interactions and the average kinetic energies of the particles that constitute the stellar material. An important question is how these interactions of real gases are related to the observable stellar properties. Specifically, the relationships between rotation, magnetic activity, and the thermodynamic properties of stellar interiors are still not well understood. These connections are crucial for understanding and interpreting the abundant observational data provided by space-based missions, such as Kepler/K2 and TESS, and the future data from the PLATO mission.
Aims. In this study, we investigate the electrostatic effects within the interiors of low-mass main sequence (MS) stars. Specifically, we introduce a global quantity, a global plasma parameter, which allows us to compare the importance of electrostatic interactions across a range of low-mass theoretical models (0.7 − 1.4 M⊙) with varying ages and metallicities. We then correlate the electrostatic properties of the theoretical models with the observable rotational trends on the MS.
Methods. We use the open-source 1D stellar evolution code MESA to compute a grid of main-sequence stellar models. Our models span the log g − Teff space of a set of 66 Kepler main-sequence stars.
Results. We identify a correlation between the prominence of electrostatic effects in stellar interiors and stellar rotation rates. The variations in the magnitude of electrostatic interactions with age and metallicity further suggest that understanding the underlying physics of the collective effects of plasma can clarify key observational trends related to the rotation of low-mass stars on the MS. These results may also advance our understanding of the physics behind the observed weakened magnetic braking in stars.
Key words: stars: evolution / stars: fundamental parameters / stars: general / stars: interiors / stars: low-mass / stars: rotation
© The Authors 2024
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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