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Register a new userA Spectroscopic Technique for Measuring Stellar Properties of Pre-Main Sequence Stars
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G. W. Doppmann
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We describe a technique for deriving effective temperatures, surface gravities, rotation velocities, and radial velocities from high resolution near-IR spectra. The technique matches the observed near-IR spectra to spectra synthesized from model atmospheres. For pre-main sequence stars, we use the same matching process to also measure the amount of excess near-IR emission. The information derived from high resolution spectra comes from line shapes and the relative line strengths of closely spaced lines. The values for the stellar parameters we derive are therefore independent of those derived from low resolution spectroscopy and photometry. The new method offers the promise of improved accuracy in placing young stellar objects on evolutionary model tracks. We discuss the possible systematic effects on our determination of the stellar parameters and evaluate the accuracy of the results derivable from high resolution spectra. The analysis of high resolution near-IR spectra of MK standards shows that the technique gives very accurate values for the effective temperature. The biggest uncertainty in comparing our results with optical spectral typing of MK standards is in the spectral type to effective temperature conversion for the standards themselves. Even including this uncertainty, the 1 sigma difference between the optical and IR temperatures for 3000-5800 K dwarfs is only 140 K. In a companion paper (Doppmann, Jaffe, & White 2003), we present an analysis of heavily extincted young stellar objects rho Oph.
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We present high resolution (R=50,000) spectra at 2.2 um of 16 young stars in the rho Ophiuchi dark cloud. Photospheric features are detected in the spectra of 11 of these sources, all Class II young stellar objects. In 10 of these sources, we measure effective temperatures, continuum veiling, and vsini rotation from the shapes and strengths of atomic photospheric lines by comparing to spectral synthesis models at 2.2 um. We measure surface gravities in 2 stars from the integrated line flux ratio of the 12CO line region at 2.3 um and the Na I line region at 2.2 um. Although the majority (8/10) of the Class II stars have similar effective temperatures (3530 K +/-100 K), they exhibit a large spread in bolometric luminosities (factor ~8), as derived from near-IR photometry. In the two stars where we have surface gravity measurements from spectroscopy, the photometrically derived luminosities are systematically higher than the spectroscopic luminosities. Our spectroscopic luminosities result in older ages on the H-R diagram than is suggested by photometry at J or K. Most of our sources show a substantially larger amount of continuum excess than stellar flux at 2.2 um. The derived veiling values at K appear correlated with mid-IR disk luminosity, and with Brackett gamma equivalent width, corrected for veiling. The derived vsini rotation is substantial (12-39 km s-1), but systematically less than the rotation measured in Class I.5 (flat) and Class I sources from other studies in Ophiuchus.
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) survey Measuring Young Stars in Space and Time (MYSST) entails some of the deepest photometric observations of extragalactic star formation, capturing even the lowest mass stars of the active star-forming complex N44 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. We employ the new MYSST stellar catalog to identify and characterize the content of young pre-main-sequence (PMS) stars across N44 and analyze the PMS clustering structure. To distinguish PMS stars from more evolved line of sight contaminants, a non-trivial task due to several effects that alter photometry, we utilize a machine learning classification approach. This consists of training a support vector machine (SVM) and a random forest (RF) on a carefully selected subset of the MYSST data and categorize all observed stars as PMS or non-PMS. Combining SVM and RF predictions to retrieve the most robust set of PMS sources, we find $sim26,700$ candidates with a PMS probability above 95% across N44. Employing a clustering approach based on a nearest neighbor surface density estimate, we identify 18 prominent PMS structures at $1$ $sigma$ significance above the mean density with sub-clusters persisting up to and beyond $3$ $sigma$ significance. The most active star-forming center, located at the western edge of N44s bubble, is a subcluster with an effective radius of $sim 5.6$ pc entailing more than 1,100 PMS candidates. Furthermore, we confirm that almost all identified clusters coincide with known H II regions and are close to or harbor massive young O stars or YSOs previously discovered by MUSE and Spitzer observations.
A severe problem of the research in star-formation is that the masses of young stars are almost always estimated only from evolutionary tracks. Since the tracks published by different groups differ, it is often only possible to give a rough estimate of the masses of young stars. It is thus crucial to test and calibrate the tracks. Up to now, only a few tests of the tracks could be carried out. However, with the VLTI it is now possible to set constrains on the tracks by determining the masses of many young binary stars precisely. In order to use the VLTI efficiently, a first step is to find suitable targets, which is the purpose of this work. Given the distance of nearby star-forming regions, suitable VLTI targets are binaries with orbital periods between at least 50 days, and few years. Although a number of surveys for detecting spectroscopic binaries have been carried out, most of the binaries found so far have periods which are too short. We thus surveyed the Chamaeleon, Corona Australis, Lupus, Sco-Cen, rho Ophiuci star-forming regions in order to search for spectroscopic binaries with periods longer than 50 days, which are suitable for the VLTI observations. As a result of the 8 years campaign we discovered 8 binaries with orbital periods longer than 50 days. Amongst the newly discovered long period binaries is CS Cha, which is one of the few classical T Tauri stars with a circumbinary disk. The survey is limited to objects with masses higher than 0.1 to 0.2 Modot for periods between 1 and 8 years. We find that the frequency of binaries with orbital periods < 3000 days is of 20+/-5 percent. The frequency of long and short period pre-main sequence spectroscopic binaries is about the same as for stars in the solar neighbourhood. In total 14 young binaries are now known which are suitable for mass determination with the VLTI.
We cross-correlate the Herbig & Bell and Hipparcos Catalogues in order to extract the results for young stellar objects (YSOs). We compare the distances of individual young stars and the distance of their presumably associated molecular clouds, taking into account post-Hipparcos distances to the relevant associations and using Hipparcos intermediate astrometric data to derive new parallaxes of the pre-main sequence stars based on their grouping. We confirm that YSOs are located in their associated clouds, as anticipated by a large body of work, and discuss reasons which make the individual parallaxes of some YSOs doubtful. We find in particular that the distance of Taurus YSOs as a group is entirely consistent with the molecular cloud distance, although Hipparcos distances of some faint Taurus-Auriga stars must be viewed with caution. We then improve some of the solutions for the binary and multiple pre-main sequence stars. In particular, we confirm three new astrometric young binaries discovered by Hipparcos: RY Tau, UX Ori, and IX Oph.
Low-mass pre-main sequence (PMS) stars are strong and variable X-ray emitters, as has been well established by EINSTEIN and ROSAT observatories. It was originally believed that this emission was of thermal nature and primarily originated from coronal activity (magnetically confined loops, in analogy with Solar activity) on contracting young stars. Broadband spectral analysis showed that the emission was not isothermal and that elemental abundances were non-Solar. The resolving power of the Chandra and XMM X-ray gratings spectrometers have provided the first, tantalizing details concerning the physical conditions such as temperatures, densities, and abundances that characterize the X-ray emitting regions of young star. These existing high resolution spectrometers, however, simply do not have the effective area to measure diagnostic lines for a large number of PMS stars over required to answer global questions such as: how does magnetic activity in PMS stars differ from that of main sequence stars, how do they evolve, what determines the population structure and activity in stellar clusters, and how does the activity influence the evolution of protostellar disks. Highly resolved (R>3000) X-ray spectroscopy at orders of magnitude greater efficiency than currently available will provide major advances in answering these questions. This requires the ability to resolve the key diagnostic emission lines with a precision of better than 100 km/s.
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