How reliable is Zeeman Doppler Imaging without simultaneous temperature reconstruction?

Aims: The goal of this study is to perform numerical tests of Zeeman Doppler Imaging (ZDI) to asses whether correct reconstruction of magnetic fields is at all possible without taking temperature into account for stars in which magnetic and temperature inhomogeneities are spatially correlated. Methods: We used a modern ZDI code employing a physically realistic treatment of the polarized radiative transfer in all four Stokes parameters. We generated artificial observations of isolated magnetic spots and of magnetic features coinciding with cool temperature spots and then reconstructed magnetic and temperature distributions from these data. Results: Using Stokes I and V for simultaneous magnetic and temperature mapping for the star with a homogeneous temperature distribution yields magnetic field strengths underestimated by typically 10-15% relative to their true values. When temperature is kept constant and Stokes I is not used for magnetic mapping, the underestimation is 30-60%. At the same time, the strength of magnetic field inside cool spots is underestimated by as much as 80-95% and the spot geometry is also poorly reconstructed when temperature variations are ignored. On the other hand, the inversion quality is greatly improved when temperature variations are accounted for in magnetic mapping. When using all four Stokes parameters the reconstructed field strength inside cool spots is underestimated by 30-40% but the spot geometry can be recovered very accurately compared to the experiments with circular polarization alone. Conclusions: Reliable magnetic field reconstruction for a star with high-contrast temperature spots is essentially impossible if temperature inhomogeneities are ignored. A physically realistic line profile modeling method, which simultaneously accounts for both types of inhomogeneities, is required for meaningful ZDI of cool active stars

Simulations of magneto-hydrodynamic waves in atmospheres of roAp stars

We report 2D time-dependent non-linear magneto-hydrodynamical simulations of waves in the atmospheres of roAp stars. We explore a grid of simulations in a wide parameter space. The aim of our study is to understand the influence of the atmosphere and the magnetic field on the propagation and reflection properties of magneto-acoustic waves, formation of shocks and node layers.Comment: 2 pages, Proceedings of the IAU Symposium 259, "Cosmic Magnetic Fields: From Planets, to Stars and Galaxies", November 200

Magnetic Field of the Eclipsing M Dwarf Binary YY Gem

YY Gem is a short-period eclipsing binary system containing two nearly identical, rapidly rotating, very active early-M dwarfs. This binary represents an important benchmark system for calibrating empirical relations between fundamental properties of low-mass stars and for testing theories of interior structure and evolution of these objects. Both components of YY Gem exhibit inflated radii, which has been attributed to poorly understood magnetic activity effects. Despite a long history of magnetic activity studies of this system no direct magnetic field measurements have been made for it. Here we present a comprehensive characterisation of the surface magnetic field in both components of YY Gem. We reconstructed the global field topologies with the help of a tomographic inversion technique applied to high-resolution spectropolarimetric data. This analysis revealed moderately complex global fields with a typical strength of 200-300 G and anti-aligned dipolar components. A complementary Zeeman intensification analysis of the disentangled intensity spectra showed that the total mean field strength reaches 3.2-3.4 kG in both components of YY Gem. We used these results together with other recent magnetic field measurements of M dwarfs to investigate the relation between the global and small-scale fields in these stars. We also assessed predictions of competing magnetoconvection interior structure models developed for YY Gem, finding that only one of them anticipated the surface field strength compatible with our observations. Results of our star spot mapping of YY Gem do not support the alternative family of theoretical stellar models which attempts to explain the radii inflation by postulating a large spot filling factor.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures; accepted for publication in Ap

The effect of isotopic splitting on the bisector and inversions of the solar Ca II 854.2 nm line

The Ca II 854.2 nm spectral line is a common diagnostic of the solar chromosphere. The average line profile shows an asymmetric core, and its bisector shows a characteristic inverse-C shape. The line actually consists of six components with slightly different wavelengths depending on the isotope of calcium. This isotopic splitting of the line has been taken into account in studies of non-solar stars, but never for the Sun. We performed non-LTE radiative transfer computations from three models of the solar atmosphere and show that the asymmetric line-core and inverse C-shape of the bisector of the 854.2 nm line can be explained by isotopic splitting. We confirm this finding by analysing observations and showing that the line asymmetry is present irrespective of conditions in the solar atmosphere. Finally, we show that inversions based on the Ca II 854.2 nm line should take the isotopic splitting into account, otherwise the inferred atmospheres will contain erroneous velocity gradients and temperatures.Comment: Accepted for ApJ

Characterising the surface magnetic fields of T Tauri stars with high-resolution near-infrared spectroscopy

We aim to characterise the surface magnetic fields of a sample of 8 T Tauri stars from high-resolution near-IR spectroscopy. Some stars in our sample are known to be magnetic from previous spectroscopic or spectropolarimetric studies. Our goals are 1) to apply Zeeman broadening modelling to T Tauri stars with high-resolution data, 2) to expand the sample of stars with measured surface magnetic field strengths, 3) to investigate possible rotational or long-term magnetic variability by comparing spectral time series of given targets, and 4) to compare the magnetic field modulus tracing small-scale magnetic fields to those of large-scale magnetic fields derived by Stokes V Zeeman Doppler Imaging. We modelled the Zeeman broadening of magnetically sensitive spectral lines in the near-IR K-band from high-resolution spectra by using magnetic spectrum synthesis based on realistic model atmospheres and by using different descriptions of the surface magnetic field. We developped a Bayesian framework that selects the complexity of the magnetic field prescription based on the information contained in the data. We obtain individual magnetic field measurements for each star in our sample using four different models. We find that the Bayesian Model 4 performs best in the range of magnetic fields measured on the sample (from 1.5 kG to 4.4 kG). We do not detect a strong rotational variation of with a mean peak-to-peak variation of 0.3 kG. Our confidence intervals are of the same order of magnitude, which suggests that the Zeeman broadening is produced by a small-scale magnetic field homogeneously distributed over stellar surfaces. A comparison of our results with mean large-scale magnetic field measurements from Stokes V ZDI show different fractions of mean field strength being recovered, from 25-42% for relatively simple poloidal axisymmetric field topologies to 2-11% for more complex fields.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic