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Ground-based detection of G star superflares with NGTS

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 نشر من قبل James Jackman
 تاريخ النشر 2018
  مجال البحث فيزياء
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We present high cadence detections of two superflares from a bright G8 star (V = 11.56) with the Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS). We improve upon previous superflare detections by resolving the flare rise and peak, allowing us to fit a solar flare inspired model without the need for arbitrary break points between rise and decay. Our data also enables us to identify substructure in the flares. From changing starspot modulation in the NGTS data we detect a stellar rotation period of 59 hours, along with evidence for differential rotation. We combine this rotation period with the observed textit{ROSAT} X-ray flux to determine that the stars X-ray activity is saturated. We calculate the flare bolometric energies as $5.4^{+0.8}_{-0.7}times10^{34}$ and $2.6^{+0.4}_{-0.3}times10^{34}$ erg and compare our detections with G star superflares detected in the textit{Kepler} survey. We find our main flare to be one of the largest amplitude superflares detected from a bright G star. With energies more than 100 times greater than the Carrington event, our flare detections demonstrate the role that ground-based instruments such as NGTS can have in assessing the habitability of Earth-like exoplanets, particularly in the era of textit{PLATO}.

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In order to discuss the potential impact of solar superflares on space weather, we investigated statistical relations among energetic proton peak flux with energy higher than $ 10 rm MeV$ ($F_p$), CME speed near the Sun ($V_{CME}$) obtained by {it SO HO}/LASCO coronagraph and flare soft X-ray peak flux in 1-8AA band ($F_{SXR}$) during 110 major solar proton events (SPEs) recorded from 1996 to 2014. The linear regression fit results in the scaling relations $V_{CME} propto F_{SXR}^alpha$, $F_ppropto F_{SXR}^beta$ and $F_ppropto V_{CME}^gamma$ with $alpha = 0.30pm 0.04$, $beta = 1.19 pm 0.08$ and $gamma = 4.35 pm 0.50$, respectively. On the basis of simple physical assumptions, on the other hand, we derive scaling relations expressing CME mass ($M_{CME}$), CME speed and energetic proton flux in terms of total flare energy ($E_{flare}$) as, $M_{CME}propto E_{flare}^{2/3}$, $V_{CME}propto E_{flare}^{1/6}$ and $F_{p}propto E_{flare}^{5/6}propto V_{CME}^5$, respectively. We then combine the derived scaling relations with observation, and estimated the upper limit of $V_{CME}$ and $F_p$ to be associated with possible solar superflares.
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