Differential rotation on the lower main sequence

Abstract

We compute the differential rotation of main sequence stars of the spectral types F, G, K, and M by solving the equation of motion and the equation of convective heat transport in a mean-field formulation. For each spectral type the rotation rate is varied to study the dependence of the surface shear on this parameter. The resulting rotation patterns are all solar-type. The horizontal shear turns out to depend strongly on the effective temperature and only weakly on the rotation rate. The meridional flow depends more strongly on the rotation rate and has different directions in the cases of very slow and very fast rotation, respectively.