Active Stars in the Spectroscopic Survey of Mid-to-late M Dwarfs within 15 pc

Abstract

We present results from the volume-complete spectroscopic survey of 0.1–0.3 M _⊙ M dwarfs within 15 pc. This work discusses the active sample without close binary companions, providing a comprehensive picture of these 123 stars with H α emission stronger than −1 Å. Our analysis includes rotation periods (including 31 new measurements), H α equivalent widths, rotational broadening, inclinations, and radial velocities, determined using high-resolution, multiepoch spectroscopic data from the TRES and CHIRON spectrographs supplemented by photometry from TESS and MEarth. Using this volume-complete sample, we establish that the majority of active, low-mass M dwarfs are very rapid rotators: specifically, 74% ± 4% have rotation periods shorter than 2 days, while 19% ± 4% have intermediate rotation periods of 2–20 days, and the remaining 8% ± 3% have periods longer than 20 days. Among the latter group, we identify a population of stars with very high H α emission, which we suggest is indicative of dramatic spindown as these stars transition from the rapidly rotating mode to the slowly rotating one. We are unable to determine rotation periods for six stars and suggest that some of the stars without measured rotation periods may be viewed pole-on, as such stars are absent from the distribution of inclinations we measure; this lack notwithstanding, we recover the expected isotropic distribution of spin axes. Our spectroscopic and photometric data sets also allow us to investigate activity-induced radial-velocity variability, which we show can be estimated as the product of rotational broadening and the photometric amplitude of spot modulation.

Keywords

• M dwarf stars
• Stellar activity
• Stellar rotation
• Inclination
• Radial velocity
• Variable stars