No Arabic abstract
We report the first detailed chemical abundance analysis of the exoplanet-hosting M-dwarf stars Kepler-138 and Kepler-186 from the analysis of high-resolution ($R$ $sim$ 22,500) $H$-band spectra from the SDSS IV - APOGEE survey. Chemical abundances of thirteen elements - C, O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, K, Ca, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, and Fe - are extracted from the APOGEE spectra of these early M-dwarfs via spectrum syntheses computed with an improved line list that takes into account H$_{2}$O and FeH lines. This paper demonstrates that APOGEE spectra can be analyzed to determine detailed chemical compositions of M-dwarfs. Both exoplanet-hosting M-dwarfs display modest sub-solar metallicities: [Fe/H]$_{Kepler-138}$ = -0.09 $pm$ 0.09 dex and [Fe/H]$_{Kepler-186}$ = -0.08 $pm$ 0.10 dex. The measured metallicities resulting from this high-resolution analysis are found to be higher by $sim$0.1-0.2 dex than previous estimates from lower-resolution spectra. The C/O ratios obtained for the two planet-hosting stars are near-solar, with values of 0.55 $pm$ 0.10 for Kepler-138 and 0.52 $pm$ 0.12 for Kepler-186. Kepler-186 exhibits a marginally enhanced [Si/Fe] ratio.
We analyzed Kepler short-cadence M dwarf observations. Spectra from the ARC 3.5m telescope identify magnetically active (H$alpha$ in emission) stars. The active stars are of mid-M spectral type, have numerous flares, and well-defined rotational modulation due to starspots. The inactive stars are of early-M type, exhibit less starspot signature, and have fewer flares. A Kepler to U-band energy scaling allows comparison of the Kepler flare frequency distributions with previous ground-based data. M dwarfs span a large range of flare frequency and energy, blurring the distinction between active and inactive stars designated solely by the presence of H$alpha$. We analyzed classical and complex (multiple peak) flares on GJ 1243, finding strong correlations between flare energy, amplitude, duration and decay time, with only a weak dependence on rise time. Complex flares last longer and have higher energy at the same amplitude, and higher energy flares are more likely to be complex. A power law fits the energy distribution for flares with log $E_{K_p} >$ 31 ergs, but the predicted number of low energy flares far exceeds the number observed, at energies where flares are still easily detectable, indicating that the power law distribution may flatten at low energy. There is no correlation of flare occurrence or energy with starspot phase; the flare waiting time distribution is consistent with flares occurring randomly in time; and the energies of consecutive flares are uncorrelated. These observations support a scenario where many independent active regions on the stellar surface are contributing to the observed flare rate.
We use models of stellar angular momentum evolution to determine ages for $sim500$ stars in the APOGEE-textit{Kepler} Cool Dwarfs sample. We focus on lower main-sequence stars, where other age-dating tools become ineffective. Our age distributions are compared to those derived from asteroseismic and giant samples and solar analogs. We are able to recover gyrochronological ages for old, lower-main-sequence stars, a remarkable improvement over prior work in hotter stars. Under our model assumptions, our ages have a median relative uncertainty of $14%$, comparable to the age precision inferred for more massive stars using traditional methods. We investigate trends of galactic $alpha$-enhancement with age, finding evidence of a detection threshold between the age of the oldest $alpha$-poor stars and that of the bulk $alpha$-rich population. We argue that gyrochronology is an effective tool reaching ages of 10--12 Gyr in K- and early M-dwarfs. Finally, we present the first effort to quantify the impact of detailed abundance patterns on rotational evolution. We estimate a $sim15%$ bias in age for cool, $alpha$-enhanced (+ 0.4 dex) stars when standard solar-abundance-pattern rotational models are used for age inference, rather than models that appropriately account for $alpha$-enrichment.
We use 5,337 spectroscopic $v sin i$ measurements of Kepler dwarfs and subgiants from the APOGEE survey to study stellar rotation trends. We find a detection threshold of 10 km/s, which allows us to explore the spindown of intermediate-mass stars leaving the main sequence, merger products, young stars, and tidally-synchronized binaries. We see a clear distinction between blue stragglers and the field turnoff in $alpha$-rich stars, with a sharp rapid rotation cutoff for blue stragglers consistent with the Kraft break. We also find rapid rotation and RV variability in a sample of red straggler stars, considerably cooler than the giant branch, lending credence to the hypothesis that these are active, tidally-synchronized binaries. We see clear evidence for a transition between rapid and slow rotation on the subgiant branch in the domain predicted by modern angular momentum evolution models. We find substantial agreement between the spectroscopic and photometric properties of KIC targets added by Huber et al (2014) based on 2MASS photometry. For the unevolved lower main sequence, we see the same concentration toward rapid rotation in photometric binaries as that observed in rotation period data, but at an enhanced rate. We attribute this difference to unresolved near-equal luminosity spectroscopic binaries with velocity displacements on the order of the APOGEE resolution. Among cool unevolved stars we find an excess rapid rotator fraction of 4% caused by pipeline issues with photometric binaries.
To understand the formation and composition of planetary systems it is important to study their host stars composition since both are formed in the same stellar nebula. In this work we analyze the behaviour of chemical abundances of Cu, Zn, Sr, Y, Zr, Ba, Ce, Nd and Eu in the large and homogeneous HARPS-GTO planet search sample ($R sim$ 115000). This sample is composed of 120 stars hosting high-mass planets, 29 stars hosting exclusively Neptunians and Super-Earths and 910 stars without detected giant planets. We compare the [X/Fe] ratios of such elements in different metallicity bins and we find that planet hosts present higher abundances of Zn for [Fe/H]$<$--0.1 dex. On the other hand, Ba, Sr, Ce and Zr abundances are underabundant in stars with planets, with a bigger difference for stars only hosting low-mass planets. However, most of the offsets found can be explained by differences in stellar parameters and by the fact that planet hosts at low metallicity mostly belong to the Galactic thick disk. Only in the case of Ba we find a statistically significant (3$sigma$) underabundance of 0.03 dex for low-mass planet hosts. The origin of these elements is quite complex due to their evolution during the history of the Galaxy. Therefore, it is necessary to understand and characterize the stellar populations to which planet hosts belong in order to do a fair comparison with stars without detected planets. This work demonstrates that the effects of Galactic chemical evolution and not the presence of planets mostly account for the differences we find.
We present a study of 33 {it Kepler} planet-candidate host stars for which asteroseismic observations have sufficiently high signal-to-noise ratio to allow extraction of individual pulsation frequencies. We implement a new Bayesian scheme that is flexible in its input to process individual oscillation frequencies, combinations of them, and average asteroseismic parameters, and derive robust fundamental properties for these targets. Applying this scheme to grids of evolutionary models yields stellar properties with median statistical uncertainties of 1.2% (radius), 1.7% (density), 3.3% (mass), 4.4% (distance), and 14% (age), making this the exoplanet host-star sample with the most precise and uniformly determined fundamental parameters to date. We assess the systematics from changes in the solar abundances and mixing-length parameter, showing that they are smaller than the statistical errors. We also determine the stellar properties with three other fitting algorithms and explore the systematics arising from using different evolution and pulsation codes, resulting in 1% in density and radius, and 2% and 7% in mass and age, respectively. We confirm previous findings of the initial helium abundance being a source of systematics comparable to our statistical uncertainties, and discuss future prospects for constraining this parameter by combining asteroseismology and data from space missions. Finally we compare our derived properties with those obtained using the global average asteroseismic observables along with effective temperature and metallicity, finding an excellent level of agreement. Owing to selection effects, our results show that the majority of the high signal-to-noise ratio asteroseismic {it Kepler} host stars are older than the Sun.