Radio Stars of the SKA

Radio emission from stars can be used, for example, to study ionized winds or stellar flares. The radio emission is faint and studies have been limited to few objects. The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) brings a survey ability to the topic of radio stars. In this paper we investigate what the SKA can detect, and what sensitivity will be required for deep surveys of the stellar Milky Way. We focus on the radio emission from OB stars, Be stars, flares from M dwarfs, and Ultra Compact HII regions. The stellar distribution in the Milky Way is simulated using the Besançon model, and various relations are used to predict their radio flux. We find that the full SKA will easily detect all UltraCompact HII regions. At the limit of 10 nJy at 5 GHz, the SKA can detect 1500 Be stars and 50 OB stars per square degree, out to several kpc. It can also detect flares from 4500 M dwarfs per square degree. At 100 nJy, the numbers become about 8 times smaller. SKA surveys of the Galactic plane should be designed for high sensitivity. Deep imaging should consider the significant number of faint flares in the field, even outside the plane of the Milky Way.

EXPLORING THE NATURE OF COMPACT RADIO SOURCES ASSOCIATED TO UCHII REGIONS

We present Very Large Array 7 mm continuum observations of four ultracompact (UC) HII regions, observed previously at 1.3 cm, in order to investigate the nature of the compact radio sources associated with these regions. We detect a total of seven compact radio sources, four of them with thermal emission, and two compact radio sources with clear non- thermal emission. The thermal emission is consistent with the presence of an ionized envelope, either static (i.e., trapped in the gravitational radius of an associated massive star) or flowing away (i.e., a photo-evaporative flow). The nature of the non-thermal sources remains unclear and several possibilities are proposed. The possibility that most of these compact radio sources are photo-evaporating objects, and the remaining ones more evolved objects, is consistent with previous studies on UCHII regions.