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Register a new userA Granulation Flicker-based Measure of Stellar Surface Gravity
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In Bastien et al. (2013) we found that high quality light curves, such as those obtained by Kepler, may be used to measure stellar surface gravity via granulation-driven light curve flicker. Here, we update and extend the relation originally presented in Bastien et al. (2013) after calibrating flicker against a more robust set of asteroseismically derived surface gravities. We describe in detail how we extract the flicker signal from the light curves, including how we treat phenomena, such as exoplanet transits and shot noise, that adversely affect the measurement of flicker. We examine the limitations of the technique, and, as a result, we now provide an updated treatment of the flicker-based logg error. We briefly highlight further applications of the technique, such as astrodensity profiling or its use in other types of stars with convective outer layers. We discuss potential uses in current and upcoming space-based photometric missions. Finally, we supply flicker-based logg values, and their uncertainties, for 27 628 Kepler stars not identified as transiting-planet hosts, with 4500<teff<7150 K, 2.5<logg<4.6, Kepler magnitude <13.5, and overall photometric amplitudes <10 parts per thousand.
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A large fraction of cool, low-mass stars exhibit brightness fluctuations that arise from a combination of convective granulation, acoustic oscillations, magnetic activity, and stellar rotation. Much of the short-timescale variability takes the form of stochastic noise, whose presence may limit the progress of extrasolar planet detection and characterization. In order to lay the groundwork for extracting useful information from these quasi-random signals, we focus on the origin of the granulation-driven component of the variability. We apply existing theoretical scaling relations to predict the star-integrated variability amplitudes for 508 stars with photometric light curves measured by the Kepler mission. We also derive an empirical correction factor that aims to account for the suppression of convection in F-dwarf stars with magnetic activity and shallow convection zones. So that we can make predictions of specific observational quantities, we performed Monte Carlo simulations of granulation light curves using a Lorentzian power spectrum. These simulations allowed us to reproduce the so-called flicker floor (i.e., a lower bound in the relationship between the full light-curve range and power in short-timescale fluctuations) that was found in the Kepler data. The Monte Carlo model also enabled us to convert the modeled fluctuation variance into a flicker amplitude directly comparable with observations. When the magnetic suppression factor described above is applied, the model reproduces the observed correlation between stellar surface gravity and flicker amplitude. Observationally validated models like these provide new and complementary evidence for a possible impact of magnetic activity on the properties of near-surface convection.
The gravitational redshift induced by stellar surface gravity is notoriously difficult to measure for non-degenerate stars, since its amplitude is small in comparison with the typical Doppler shift induced by stellar radial velocity. In this study, we make use of the large observational data set of the Gaia mission to achieve a significant reduction of noise caused by these random stellar motions. By measuring the differences in velocities between the components of pairs of co-moving stars and wide binaries, we are able to statistically measure gravitational redshift and nullify the effect of the peculiar motions of the stars. For the subset of stars considered in this study, we find a positive correlation between the observed differences in Gaia radial velocities and the differences in surface gravity inferred from effective temperature and luminosity measurements. This corresponds to the first ever measurement of extra-Solar surface gravity induced gravitational redshift in non-degenerate stars. Additionally, we study the sub-dominant effects of convective blueshifting of emission lines, effects of binary motion, and possible systematic errors in radial velocity measurements within Gaia. Results from the technique presented in this study are expected to improve significantly with data from the next Gaia data release. Such improvements could be used to constrain the mass-luminosity relation and stellar models which predict the magnitude of convective blueshift.
Surface gravity is one of a stars basic properties, but it is difficult to measure accurately, with typical uncertainties of 25-50 per cent if measured spectroscopically and 90-150 per cent photometrically. Asteroseismology measures gravity with an uncertainty of about two per cent but is restricted to relatively small samples of bright stars, most of which are giants. The availability of high-precision measurements of brightness variations for >150,000 stars provides an opportunity to investigate whether the variations can be used to determine surface gravities. The Fourier power of granulation on a stars surface correlates physically with surface gravity; if brightness variations on timescales of hours arise from granulation, then such variations should correlate with surface gravity. Here we report an analysis of archival data that reveals an observational correlation between surface gravity and the root-mean-square brightness variations on timescales of less than eight hours for stars with temperatures of 4500-6750K, log of surface gravities of 2.5-4.5 (cgs units), and having overall brightness variations <3 parts per thousand. A straightforward observation of optical brightness variations therefore allows a determination of the surface gravity with a precision of <25 percent for inactive Sun-like stars at main-sequence to giant stages of evolution.
We have determined new statistical relations to estimate the fundamental atmospheric parameters of effective temperature and surface gravity, using MK spectral classification, and vice versa. The relations were constructed based on the published calibration tables (for main sequence stars) and observational data from stellar spectral atlases (for giants and supergiants). These new relations were applied to field giants with known atmospheric parameters, and the results of the comparison of our estimations with available spectral classification had been quite satisfactory.
The solar granulation is known for a long time to be a surface manifestation of convection. Thanks to the current space-borne missions CoRoT and Kepler, it is now possible to observe in disk-integrated intensity the signature of this phenomena in a growing number of stars. The space-based photometric measurements show that the global brightness fluctuations and the lifetime associated with granulation obeys characteristic scaling relations. We thus aim at providing a simple theoretical modeling to reproduce these scaling relations and subsequently at inferring the physical properties of granulation properties across the HR diagram. We develop a simple 1D theoretical model that enable us to test any prescription concerning the time-correlation between granules. The input parameters of the model are extracted from 3D hydrodynamical models of the surface layers of stars, and the free parameters involved in the model are calibrated with solar observations. Two different prescriptions for representing the eddy time-correlation in the Fourier space are compared: a Lorentzian and an exponential form. Finally, we compare our theoretical prediction with a 3D radiative hydrodynamical (RHD) numerical modeling of stellar granulation (ab-initio approach). Provided that the free parameters are appropriately adjusted, our theoretical model satisfactorily reproduces the shape and the amplitude of the observed solar granulation spectrum. The best agreement is obtained with an exponential form. Furthermore, our theoretical model results in granulation spectra that consistently agree with the these calculated on the basis of the ab-initio approach with two 3D RHD models. Comparison between theoretical granulation spectra calculated with the present model and high precision photometry measurements of stellar granulation is undertaken in a companion paper.
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