The distribution of small-scale magnetic fields in stellar photospheres is an
important ingredient in our understanding of the magnetism of low mass stars.
Their spatial distribution connects the field generated in the stellar interior
with the outer corona and the large scale field, and thereby affects the space
weather of planets. Unfortunately, we lack techniques that can locate them on
most low-mass stars. One strategy is to localize field concentrations using the
flares that occur in their vicinity.
We explore a new method that adapts the spot simulation software fleck to
study the modulation of flaring times as a function of active latitude. We use
empirical relations to construct flare light curves similar to those available
from Kepler and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), search them
for flares, and use the waiting times between flares to determine the location
of active latitudes.
We find that the mean and standard deviation of the waiting time distribution
provide a unique diagnostic of flaring latitudes as a function of the number of
active regions. Latitudes are best recovered when stars have three or less
active regions that flare repeatedly, and active latitude widths below 20 deg;
when either increases, the information about the active latitude location is
gradually lost. We demonstrate our technique on a sample of flaring G dwarfs
observed with the Kepler satellite, and furthermore suggest that combining
ensemble methods for spots and flares could overcome the limitations of each
individual technique for the localization of surface magnetic fields.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures. Accepted to MNRAS. Repository with source code:
https://github.com/ekaterinailin/flare-locations-ensembles-science Repository
with data: https://zenodo.org/record/799692