Predicting Photospheric Ultraviolet Emission from Stellar Evolutionary Models

Abstract

Stellar ultraviolet (UV) emission serves as a crucial indicator for estimating magnetic activity and evaluating the habitability of exoplanets orbiting stars. In this paper, we present a straightforward method to derive stellar photospheric UV emission for F to M main-sequence stars. By using PARSEC models, we establish relations between near-UV (NUV) and far-UV (FUV) magnitudes from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, NUV magnitudes from the China Space Station Telescope, and stellar effective temperatures and Gaia blue photometer–red photometer colors for different metallicities. Together with the observed sample, we find that for NUV emission, the photospheric contribution to the observed flux is less than 20% for M stars, around 10%–70% for K stars, and in a range from 30% to 85% for G and F stars. For FUV emission, the photospheric contribution is less than 10 ^−6 for M stars, below 10 ^−4 for K stars, around 10 ^−4 –10% for G stars, and between 6% and 50% for F stars. Our work enables the simple and effective determination of stellar excess UV emission and the exploration of magnetic activity.

Keywords

• Stellar chromospheres
• Stellar photospheres
• Stellar activity
• Ultraviolet photometry