Ancient Star's Magnetic Revival Solves Long-Standing Physics Puzzle
Researchers have confirmed that aging stars can spontaneously revive their magnetic fields through a counterintuitive rotation pattern, resolving decades of theoretical predictions. The discovery, made by observing a nearby subgiant star, refines our understanding of stellar aging and could improve models predicting space weather effects on Earth's technology infrastructure.
Originaltitel: Antisolar Differential Rotation May Have Revived Magnetic Braking in the Subgiant 31 Aquilae
<p>Recent observations have shown that sufficiently slow rotation disrupts the organization of large-scale magnetic field in older main-sequence stars, leading to weakened magnetic braking (WMB) and a collapse in the efficiency of the global stellar dynamo. Recent simulations predict a shift from solar-like to antisolar differential rotation (DR) at slower rotation rates, which typically do not occur on the main sequence due to WMB. However, physical expansion on the subgiant branch can eventually slow the stellar rotation beyond this threshold, yielding a noncycling large-scale field that revives magnetic braking. We combine asteroseismology from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) with spectropolarimetry from the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) to test these predictions in the old metal-rich subgiant 31 Aql. The LBT observations reveal a strong large-scale magnetic field in this star, and archival measurements of its chromospheric emission over 50 yr confirm that it is noncycling, as predicted. The star exhibits a variety of rotation periods during different observing seasons, consistent with DR but with no means of distinguishing between solar-like and antisolar patterns. We incorporate the TESS observations to estimate the current wind-braking torque of 31 Aql, demonstrating that it supports revived magnetic braking in this old subgiant. We also use rotational evolution modeling to place a preliminary constraint on the stellar Rossby number for the transition to antisolar DR. Future refinements in both asteroseismic observations and rotational modeling may yield improvements to this initial analysis.</p>