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Published November 2016 | Published
Journal Article Open

Rotation in the Pleiades with K2. III. Speculations on Origins and Evolution

Abstract

We use high-quality K2 light curves for hundreds of stars in the Pleiades to better understand the angular momentum evolution and magnetic dynamos of young low-mass stars. The K2 light curves provide not only rotational periods but also detailed information from the shape of the phased light curve that was not available in previous studies. A slowly rotating sequence begins at (V - K_s)_0 ~ 1.1 (spectral type F5) and ends at (V - K_s)_0 ~ 3.7 (spectral type K8), with periods rising from ~2 to ~11 days in that interval. A total of 52% of the Pleiades members in that color interval have periods within 30% of a curve defining the slow sequence; the slowly rotating fraction decreases significantly redward of (V - K_s)_0 = 2.6. Nearly all of the slow-sequence stars show light curves that evolve significantly on timescales less than the K2 campaign duration. The majority of the FGK Pleiades members identified as photometric binaries are relatively rapidly rotating, perhaps because binarity inhibits star–disk angular momentum loss mechanisms during pre-main-sequence evolution. The fully convective late M dwarf Pleiades members (5.0 < (V - K_s)_0 < 6.0) nearly always show stable light curves, with little spot evolution or evidence of differential rotation. During pre-main-sequence evolution from ~3 Myr (NGC 2264 age) to ~125 Myr (Pleiades age), stars of 0.3 M_⊙ shed about half of their angular momentum, with the fractional change in period between 3 and 125 Myr being nearly independent of mass for fully convective stars. Our data also suggest that very low mass binaries form with rotation periods more similar to each other and faster than would be true if drawn at random from the parent population of single stars.

Additional Information

© 2016. The American Astronomical Society. Received 2016 May 2; revised 2016 May 31; accepted 2016 June 1; published 2016 October 11. A.C.C. acknowledges support from STFC grant ST/M001296/1. Some of the data presented in this paper were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). Support for MAST for non-HST data is provided by the NASA Office of Space Science via grant NNX09AF08G and by other grants and contracts. This paper includes data collected by the Kepler mission. Funding for the Kepler mission is provided by the NASA Science Mission directorate. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive (IRSA), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This research has made use of NASA's Astrophysics Data System (ADS) Abstract Service and of the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France. This research has made use of data products from the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS), which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. The 2MASS data are served by the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This publication makes use of data products from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Facilities: K2 - , Keck - , Spitzer - .

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Created:
August 20, 2023
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