Katja Poppenhaeger

Ekaterina Ilin, a PhD student in my group, has recently published her work on stellar flares in three young and two middle-aged open clusters.

From the abstract: “Drawing from the complete K2 archive, we searched 3435∼80 day long light curves of 2111 open cluster members for flares using the open-source software packages K2SC to remove instrumental and astrophysical variability from K2 light curves, and AltaiPony to search and characterize the flare candidates. We confirmed a total of 3844 flares on high probability open cluster members with ages from zero age main sequence(Pleiades) to 3.6 Gyr (M67). We extended the mass range probed in the first study of this series to span from Sun-like stars to mid-Mdwarfs. We added the Hyades (690 Myr) to the sample as a comparison cluster to Praesepe (750 Myr), the 2.6 Gyr old Ruprecht 147, and several hundred light curves from the late K2 Campaigns in the remaining clusters. We found that the flare energy distribution was similar in the entire parameter space, following a power law relation with exponent a=1.84−2.39. We confirmed that flaring rates declined with age, and declined faster for higher mass stars. Our results are in good agreement with most previous statistical flare studies. We found evidence that a rapid decline in flaring activity occurred in M1-M2 dwarfs around Hyades/Praesepe age, when these stars spun down to rotation periods of about 10 d, while higher mass stars had already transitioned to lower flaring rates, and lower mass stars still resided in the saturated activity regime. We conclude that somediscrepancies between our results and flare studies that used rotation periods for their age estimates could be explained by sample selection bias toward more active stars, but others may hint at limitations of using rotation as an age indicator without additional constraints from stellar activity.”

“Flares in Open Clusters with K2. II. Pleiades, Hyades, Praesepe, Ruprecht 147, and M67“, Ilin, Ekaterina; Schmidt, Sarah J.; Poppenhäger, Katja; Davenport, James R. A.; Kristiansen, Martti H.; Omohundro, Mark, accepted by A&A, 2020.

Together with my PhD student Laura Ketzer and postdoc Matthias Mallonn, we have published a new paper on the atmospheric evaporation of the four very young planets around the star V1298 Tau. We measured the star’s X-ray spectrum by combining ROSAT and Chandra observations, and found that the star is highly active with an X-ray luminosity above 10^30 erg/s. Laura developed a numerical code to estimate the planetary evaporation as the star ages and becomes less X-ray bright. Depending on the masses of the planetary cores and the age at which the star will start spinning down, some of the planets may lose their complete atmosphere by the time the star reaches the age of our Sun.

This paper was also featured in a press release of our institute: https://www.aip.de/en/news/science/four-newborn-exoplanets-get-cooked-by-their-sun?set_language=en

For a read, go here: “X-ray irradiation and evaporation of the four young planets around V1298 Tau”, Poppenhaeger, K.; Ketzer, L.; Mallonn, M., Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Advance Access, May 2020

My freshly graduated PhD student, Dr. Rachel Booth, has published the final paper from her PhD thesis together with me and a few coworkers. We have analysed how the magnetic activity of sun-like stars decays as they age, and have used a sample of stars that all have well-determined asteroseismic ages. We find that even at old stellar ages on the main sequence the spin down and therefore the decay of stellar activity continues.

For a read go here: “Chromospheric emission of solar-type stars with asteroseismic ages“, Booth, R. S.; Poppenhaeger, K.; Watson, C. A.; Silva Aguirre, V.; Stello, D.; Bruntt, H., Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 491, Issue 1, p.455-467, 2020. (arXiv link).

Together with my colleagues at AIP, and led by Engin Keles, a PhD student in my Star-Planet Systems group, we have published a paper on the detection of potassium in the atmosphere of a Hot Jupiter using high-resolution transmission spectroscopy.

The potassium absorption on HD189733b and HD209458b, Keles, E.; Mallonn, M.; von Essen, C.; Carroll, T. A.; Alexoudi, X.; Pino, L.; Ilyin, I.; Poppenhäger, K.; Kitzmann, D.; Nascimbeni, V.; Turner, J. D.; Strassmeier, K. G.

The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) was used with the PEPSI spectrograph in this work; both the LBT and our institute published press releases about the result (LBT press release; AIP press release). This is an exciting result because not all Hot Jupiters have potassium detected in their atmospheres, even when they have detections of the similar element sodium. The data will be used to gain more insight into the atmospheric chemistry of Hot Jupiters.

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, Volume 489, Issue 1, p.L37-L41 (2019).

Together with many colleagues, I have contributed to a White Paper on a possible X-ray Interferometry mission. This project is led by Phil Uttley from the University of Amsterdam, and we hope to be considered for ESA’s Vision 2050 mission slot. X-ray interferometry can yield amazing spatial resolution for bright X-ray sources, even though there is still quite some technology to be developed. For stars and exoplanets, we could spatially resolve transits in front of the stellar corona – see the conceptual image I made for the White Paper.

“The high energy universe at ultra-high resolution: the power and promise of X-ray interferometry “, P. Uttley and 26 co-authors including K. Poppenhaeger, A White Paper submitted in response to ESA’s Voyage 2050 call, arXiv 1908.03144 (2019).