Rotational evolution of stars due to magnetic effects.
| Date | 06/19/19 |
| Author | David Fleming |
| Modules | STELLAR |
| Approx. runtime | 2 minutes |
Rotation period evolution for 0.1 and 1.0 solar-mass stars due to stellar evolution and magnetic braking. This example shows how the three available magnetic braking laws (Reiners & Mohanty [2012], Repetto & Nelemans [2014], and Matt et al. [2015]) impact the rotation period.
This example also demonstrates how the VPLanet implementation of the Matt et al. [2015] magnetic braking model can be used to reproduce the upper enveloped of the Kepler field stellar rotation period distribution, a main result from Matt et al. [2015].
python makeplot.py <pdf | png>
Rotation period evolution of 0.1 and 1 solar-mass stars due to stellar evolution (Baraffe et al. 2015) and the three magnetic braking laws.
Rotation period distribution of a ~4 Gyr-old synthetic cluster of stars simulated using STELLAR with the Matt et al. [2015] magnetic braking model (black, adapting VPLanet simulations from Fleming et al. [2019]). Following Fig. (3) in Matt et al. [2015], we compare the Fleming et al. [2019] simulated distribution to the rotation distribution of Kepler field stars (red) measured by McQuillan et al. [2014]. For reference, we plot the modern solar rotation period as a blue star. Using STELLAR, Fleming et al. [2019] recover the Matt et al. [2015] result that the upper envelope of the Kepler stellar rotation period distribution is well-matched by a 4 Gyr-old synthetic cluster, validating the STELLAR implementation of the Matt et al. [2015] magnetic braking model.