scholarly journals Magnetic fields of rapidly oscillating Ap stars

1993 ◽  
Vol 139 ◽  
pp. 132-132
Author(s):  
G. Mathys

Magnetic field appears to play a major role in the pulsations of rapidly oscillating Ap (roAp) stars. Understanding of the behaviour of these objects thus requires knowledge of their magnetic field. Such knowledge is in particular essential to interpret the modulation of the amplitude of the photometric variations (with a frequency very close to the rotation frequency of the star) and to understand the driving mechanism of the pulsation. Therefore, a systematic programme of study of the magnetic field of roAp stars has been started, of which preliminary (and still very partial) results are presented here.Magnetic fields of Ap stars can be diagnosed from the Zeeman effect that they induced in spectral lines either from the observation of line-splitting in high-resolution unpolarized spectra (which only occurs in favourable circumstances) or from the observation of circular polarization of the lines in medium- to high-resolution spectra.

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (S302) ◽  
pp. 290-299
Author(s):  
Oleg Kochukhov

AbstractStars with radiative envelopes, specifically the upper main sequence chemically peculiar (Ap) stars, were among the first objects outside our solar system for which surface magnetic fields have been detected. Currently magnetic Ap stars remains the only class of stars for which high-resolution measurements of both linear and circular polarization in individual spectral lines are feasible. Consequently, these stars provide unique opportunities to study the physics of polarized radiative transfer in stellar atmospheres, to analyze in detail stellar magnetic field topologies and their relation to starspots, and to test different methodologies of stellar magnetic field mapping. Here I present an overview of different approaches to modeling the surface fields in magnetic A- and B-type stars. In particular, I summarize the ongoing efforts to interpret high-resolution full Stokes vector spectra of these stars using magnetic Doppler imaging. These studies reveal an unexpected complexity of the magnetic field geometries in some Ap stars.


1995 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 338-340
Author(s):  
D. Kurtz ◽  
P. Martinez

Among the A stars there is a subclass of peculiar stars, the Ap stars, which show strongly enhanced spectral lines of the Fe peak, rare earth and lanthanide elements. These stars have global surface magnetic fields several orders of magnitude larger than that of the Sun, 0.3 to 30 kGauss is the measured range. For stars with the strongest magnetic fields, the spectral lines are split by the Zeeman Effect and the surface magnetic field strength can be measured. Generally, though, the magnetic fields are not strong enough for the magnetic splitting to exceed other sources of line broadening. In these cases residual polarization differences between the red and blue wings of the spectral lines give a measure of the effective magnetic field strength - the integral of the longitudinal component of the global magnetic field over the visible hemisphere, weighted by limb-darkening. In the Ap stars the effective magnetic field strengths vary with rotation. This is well understood in terms of the oblique rotator model in which the magnetic axis is oblique to the rotation axis, so that the magnetic field is seen from varying aspect with rotation.


1993 ◽  
Vol 138 ◽  
pp. 305-309
Author(s):  
Marco Landolfi ◽  
Egidio Landi Degl’Innocenti ◽  
Maurizio Landi Degl’Innocenti ◽  
Jean-Louis Leroy ◽  
Stefano Bagnulo

AbstractBroadband linear polarization in the spectra of Ap stars is believed to be due to differential saturation between σ and π Zeeman components in spectral lines. This mechanism has been known for a long time to be the main agent of a similar phenomenon observed in sunspots. Since this phenomenon has been carefully calibrated in the solar case, it can be confidently used to deduce the magnetic field of Ap stars.Given the magnetic configuration of a rotating star, it is possible to deduce the broadband polarization at any phase. Calculations performed for the oblique dipole model show that the resulting polarization diagrams are very sensitive to the values of i (the angle between the rotation axis and the line of sight) and β (the angle between the rotation and magnetic axes). The dependence on i and β is such that the four-fold ambiguity typical of the circular polarization observations ((i,β), (β,i), (π-i,π-β), (π-β,π-i)) can be removed.


1958 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 166-168
Author(s):  
Y. öhman

When measuring the magnetic fields of sunspots the astronomer assumes that the magnetic field revealed by the inverse Zeeman effect is the same as if the splitting were produced by emission lines instead of absorption lines. No doubt this is in general a very fair approximation, but we have reason to remember sometimes that line absorption in the presence of magnetic fields is a very complicated process. In the immediate neighbourhood of absorption lines effects of magnetic rotation of the plane of polarization and magnetic double refraction may appear in the spectrum.


1971 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 59-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl D. Rakoš

It is certain, that the mechanism causing variations of the magnetic field and spectral lines in Ap stars must also cause variations in their luminosities. The light curves are synchronous with the magnetic variations and usually the maximum of the positive magnetic field strength coincides with the minimum of the light curve. In the past the oblique rotator theory was not able to explain easily such brightness change. There is no simple reason to suppose, that the brightness of the surface of a star would increase or decrease at one magnetic pole only. Since that time a few stars were found with some indications for secondary minima and maxima in the light curves, but the first established double wave in a light curve was recently found by H. M. MAITZEN and K. D. RAKOš in HD 125 248 (1970), see Figure 1. It is a very exciting result, only the light curve in yellow light shows two maxima and two minima. The light curves in blue and ultraviolet are very smooth and show no evidence for secondary waves.


Author(s):  
V. Lozitsky

We present study of solar flare of 19 July 2000 which arose in active region NOAA 9087 and had M 5.6 / 3N importance. Observational material was obtained with the Echelle spectrograph of the horizontal solar telescope of the Astronomical Observatory of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. The local magnetic fields in this flare were measured by the splitting of emissive peaks of the FeI 5269.54, FeII 4923.93, Нα, Нβ, Нγand D3 HeI lines. The basic idea of the method is based on the fact that the flare emission in some spectral lines is clearly divided into two components: (1) wider and unpolarized, and (2) more narrow and polarized, with significant Zeeman splitting. This is indication to the two-component structure of the magnetic field, with substantially different magnetic fields and thermodynamical conditions in these two components. Due to the fact that the polarized emission is quite confidently separated from the unpolarized, it is possible to measure the local magnetic fields directly in the second (strong) component regardless of the filling factor. It was found that in the bright place of this flare, which was projected on the sunspot penumbra, the effective magnetic field Beff in the FeI 6301.5 i 6302.5 lines measured by splitting of the Fraunhofer profiles, was 900 G. However, the splitting of emissive peaks in Нα, Нβ, Нγ and D3 lines corresponds to 1000 G, 1400 G, 1450 G and about zero, respectively, with errors of 30-50 G for abovenamed FeI lines and about 100–150 G for other lines. This difference in the results is probably due to the fact that in the case of FeI 6301.5 i 6302.5 lines, the Beff value represents several parameters, including the value of the background field, the filling factor, and the intensity of the local fields in the strong component. In contrast, data on the Нα, Нβ, Нγ, and D3 lines mainly reflect local fields in the strong component and indicate the nonmonotonous distribution of the magnetic field with height in solar atmosphere, with its maximum at the chromospheric level. Earlier in this flare, when constructing its semi-empirical model, local amplification of the magnetic field at the photospheric level was discovered, and its value reached 1500 G. These data are confirmed by direct measurements of splitting of emissive peaks in FeI 5269.54 and FeII 4923.93 lines, according to which the magnetic field in the flare was 1250 ± 100 G. Thus, in this flare there were at least two regions (possibly two flat layers) of local amplification of the magnetic field.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-36
Author(s):  
Sergei Plachinda ◽  
Varvara Butkovskaya

A research on stellar magnetism in Crimea was initiated by pioneer works of A.B. Severny, V.E. Stepanov, and D.N. Rachkovsky. Today, the study of stellar magnetic fields is a key field of research at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory (CrAO). The 2.6 m Shajn telescope equipped with the echelle spectrograph ESPL, CCD, and Stokesmeter (a circular polarization analyzer) allows us to study the magnetic field of bright stars up to 5m–6m. The Single Line (SL) technique is developed for measuring magnetic fields at CrAO. This technique is based on the calculation of the Zeeman effect in individual spectral lines. A key advantage of the SL technique is its ability to detect local magnetic fields on the surface of stars. Many results in the field of direct measurements of stellar magnetic fields were obtained at CrAO for the first time. In particular, the magnetic field on supergiants (ǫ Gem), as well as on a number of subgiants, giants, and bright giants was first detected. This, and investigations of other authors, confirmed the hypothesis that a magnetic field is generated at all the stages of evolution of late-type stars, including the stage of star formation. The emergence of large magnetic flux tubes at the surface of stars of V-IV-III luminosity classes (61 Cyg A, β Gem, β Aql) was first registered. In subgiants, the magnetic field behavior with the activity cycle was first established for β Aql. Using the long-term Crimean spectroscopic and spectropolarimetric observations of α Lyr, the 22-year variability cycle of the star, supposedly associated with meridional flows, is confirmed. Magnetic field variability with the pulsation period was first detected for different types of pulsating variables: the classical Cepheid β Aql, the low-amplitude β Cep-type variable γ Peg, and others. In this review we cover more than a half-century history of the formation of the Crimean scientific school for high-precision direct measurements of stellar magnetic fields.


2019 ◽  
Vol 629 ◽  
pp. A99 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. J. Díaz Baso ◽  
J. de la Cruz Rodríguez ◽  
S. Danilovic

The topology and dynamics of the solar chromosphere are greatly affected by the presence of magnetic fields. The magnetic field can be inferred by analyzing polarimetric observations of spectral lines. Polarimetric signals induced by chromospheric magnetic fields are, however, particularly weak, and in most cases very close to the detection limit of current instrumentation. Because of this, there are only few observational studies that have successfully reconstructed the three components of the magnetic field vector in the chromosphere. Traditionally, the signal-to-noise ratio of observations has been improved by performing time-averages or spatial averages, but in both cases, some information is lost. More advanced techniques, like principal-component analysis, have also been employed to take advantage of the sparsity of the observations in the spectral direction. In the present study, we use the spatial coherence of the observations to reduce the noise using deep-learning techniques. We designed a neural network that is capable of recovering weak signals under a complex noise corruption (including instrumental artifacts and non-linear post-processing). The training of the network is carried out without a priori knowledge of the clean signals, or an explicit statistical characterization of the noise or other corruption. We only use the same observations as our generative model. The performance of this method is demonstrated on both synthetic experiments and real data. We show examples of the improvement in typical signals obtained in current telescopes such as the Swedish 1 m Solar Telescope. The presented method can recover weak signals equally well no matter what spectral line or spectral sampling is used. It is especially suitable for cases when the wavelength sampling is scarce.


1993 ◽  
Vol 138 ◽  
pp. 300-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gautier Mathys ◽  
John D. Landstreet ◽  
Thierry Lanz

AbstractAp stars whose spectral lines are resolved in several magnetically split components are of particular interest, because their magnetic field can be diagnosed with unrivalled precision, in an essentially approximation-free manner. We are pursuing a systematic programme of search and study of such stars. At present 25 of them are known, of which 13 have been discovered in the course of the present project (Mathys 1990, hereafter Paper I; Mathys & Lanz 1992, hereafter Paper II; this paper).Up to now, we have obtained observations of 22 of these Ap stars with resolved magnetically split lines. We have recorded high-resolution spectra of a region containing, among others, the three lines Cr ɪɪ λ6147.154, Fe ɪ λ6147.741, and Fe II λ 6149.258. The Zeeman patterns of these three lines are, respectively, close to a triplet, close to a quadruplet, and a doublet. The doublet Fe ɪɪ λ 6149.258 is particularly interesting, because of its large Landé factor (2.7): it can be resolved even in stars with fairly modest fields.


1993 ◽  
Vol 139 ◽  
pp. 134-134
Author(s):  
H. Shibahashi ◽  
M. Takata

Recently, one of the rapidly oscillating Ap stars, HR 3831, has been found to have an equally split frequency septuplet, though its oscillation seems to be essentially an axisymmetric dipole mode with respect to the magnetic axis which is oblique to the rotation axis (Kurtz et al. 1992; Kurtz 1992). In order to explain this fine structure, we investigate oscillations of obliquely rotating magnetic stars by taking account of the perturbations due to the magnetic fields and the rotation. We suppose that the star is rigidly rotating and that the magnetic field is a dipole field and its axis is oblique to the rotation axis. We treat the effects of the rotation and of the magnetic field as perturbations. In doing so, we suppose that the rotation of the star is slow enough so that the effect of the rotation on oscillations is smaller than that of the magnetic field.


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