GAIA Studies of Faint Dwarf Starts and Brown Dwarfs

Examining the Age/Activity Relationship of Ultracool Dwarfs with GAIA

Author:

Schmidt

Abstract:

The relationship between age, rotation, and magnetic activity can be used to roughly estimate the ages of solar-type stars. At lower stellar masses, the relationship between activity and age changes due to the less efficient angular momentum loss, and may disappear entirely for ultracool (late-M and L) dwarfs. The detection of flares (as a tracer of magnetic activity) can be combined with kinematic tracers of age to explore the relationship between age and activity for ultracool dwarfs. The final data release of GAIA will provide time-resolved photometry of GAIA targets in the G filter, but the effect of flares in the G-band is not well understood. I use a simple flare model to estimate the conversion of flare magnitudes for M3--L5 dwarfs in the Johnson V-, SDSS r-, and Kepler- bands to the GAIA G-band. By applying those conversions to previously observed flare rates, I estimate that M0-M6 dwarfs will have a flare rate in GAIA of Rf,GAIA≳8.73×10−4 hr−1 deg−2, corresponding to a total of ≳20,000 flares in the whole survey. If ultracool dwarfs have the same flare rate, I would expect a total of ≳20 flares on M7-L5 dwarfs.