Characterisation of magnetic activity of M dwarfs. Possible impact on the surface brightness

Abstract

Context. M dwarfs are an ideal laboratory for hunting Earth-like planets, and the study of chromospheric activity is an important part of this task. On the one hand, its short-term activity show high levels of magnetic activity that can affect habitability and make it difficult to detect exoplanets orbiting around them. But on the other hand, long-term activity studies can show whether these stars exhibit cyclical behavior or not in their activity, facilitating the detection of planets in those periods of low magnetic activity. Aims. The long-term cyclical behavior of magnetic activity can be detected studying several spectral lines and explained by different stellar dynamo models. In this work, we studied the Mount Wilson $S$-index to search for evidence of activity cycles possibly driven by a solar-type dynamo. Methods. We studied a sample of 35 dM with spectral classes ranging from dM0 to dM6. To perform this, we used 2965 spectra in the optical range to build time series with extensions of up to 21 years. We have analysed thesm with different time-domain techniques to detect cyclical patterns. In addition, we have also studied the potential impact of chromospheric activity on the surface brightness. Results. Using the color index (V-Ks), we have computed the chromospheric emission levels and we found that the majority of the stars in the sample have low emission levels. In this work, we have detected 13 potential activity cycles with a duration between 3 and 19 years and with false alarm probabilities (FAPs) less than 0.1%. For stars with non-cyclic behaviour, we have found that the mean value of the $S$-Index varies between 0.350 and 1.765 and its mean variability and chromospheric emission level are around 12% and -5.110 dex, respectively. We do not find any impact of chromospheric activity on the surface brightness in the domain of -5.6 < log $R'_{HK}$ < -4.5.