A New Level of Magnetic Saturation
An international group of astronomers including Dr. Oleg Kochukhov from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Uppsala University has detected unexpectedly strong magnetic fields on the surface of a few fast rotating M dwarf stars.
Red Dwarf. Photo: Mark A. Garlick, University of Warwick.
The press release from Georg-August University says:
“For a long time it was thought that the dynamo in these stars saturates with a maximum magnetic field strength of about four kilogauss (kG) if a star rotates faster than a particular rotation rate. Using accurate observations and up-to-date models, the researchers discovered that some fully convective M dwarfs generate even stronger fields of up to about seven kG. The results were published in Nature Astronomy on 24 July 2017.”
D. Shulyak, A. Reiners, A. Engeln, L. Malo, R. Yadav, J. Morin & O. Kochukhov, Strong dipole magnetic fields in fast rotating fully convective stars, Nature Astronomy 1, 0184 (2017), doi:10.1038/s41550-017-0184
Read the full press release from Georg-August University, Göttingen