Occurrence rate of stellar Type II radio bursts from a 100 star-year search for coronal mass ejections

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Konijn, David C., Vedantham, Harish K., Tasse, Cyril, Shimwell, Timothy W., Hardcastle, Martin J., Callingham, Joseph R., Ilin, Ekaterina, Drabent, Alexander, Zarka, Philippe, van der Tak, Floris F. S., Bloot, Sanne
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Konijn, David C.
Vedantham, Harish K.
Tasse, Cyril
Shimwell, Timothy W.
Hardcastle, Martin J.
Callingham, Joseph R.
Ilin, Ekaterina
Drabent, Alexander
Zarka, Philippe
van der Tak, Floris F. S.
Bloot, Sanne
author_facet Konijn, David C.
Vedantham, Harish K.
Tasse, Cyril
Shimwell, Timothy W.
Hardcastle, Martin J.
Callingham, Joseph R.
Ilin, Ekaterina
Drabent, Alexander
Zarka, Philippe
van der Tak, Floris F. S.
Bloot, Sanne
contents Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are major drivers of space weather in the Solar System, but their occurrence rate on other stars is unknown. A characteristic (deca-)metric radio burst with a time-frequency drift, known as a Type II radio burst, is a key observational signature of CMEs. We searched a total of 107 years of stellar data using time-frequency spectra that targeted all known stars within 100 parsecs in the LOFAR Two Metre Sky Survey (LoTSS) up to May 2023. This resulted in the largest unbiased search for circularly polarised stellar Type II metric radio bursts to date, with a typical 3$σ$ sensitivity of 2.5 mJy for an integration time of 1 minute. We detected two drifting stellar radio bursts: the published 2-minute burst from the M dwarf StKM 1-1262 and a new 13-minute burst from the M dwarf LP 215-56. The new burst is characterised by a drift rate of $-0.060^{+0.002}_{-0.002}$ MHz s$^{-1}$, an average Stokes V flux density of $-4.5^{+1.4}_{-1.3}$ mJy, and a temporal duration of $63^{+31}_{-11}$ seconds. We constrained the occurrence rate of drifting stellar bursts by calculating Poisson upper and lower limits based on the two drifting bursts. We also fitted a cumulative burst luminosity distribution to the data using the burst detections and the non-detections; this yielded a power law index ($α$) of $-0.7^{+0.9}_{-0.6}$ and a normalisation point (N) of one burst per year with $E>6.8\times10^{13}$ erg s$^{-1}$ Hz$^{-1}$. We find an agreement between this and the cumulative luminosity distribution of decametric SOHO/LASCO solar Type II data ($α= -0.81 \pm 0.06 \pm 0.02$), which suggests that the current scarcity of detected stellar Type II bursts is likely due to limited sensitivity rather than to the intrinsic rarity of these events. Additionally, we identify 19 circularly polarised stellar radio bursts without a time-frequency drift.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_09296
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Occurrence rate of stellar Type II radio bursts from a 100 star-year search for coronal mass ejections
Konijn, David C.
Vedantham, Harish K.
Tasse, Cyril
Shimwell, Timothy W.
Hardcastle, Martin J.
Callingham, Joseph R.
Ilin, Ekaterina
Drabent, Alexander
Zarka, Philippe
van der Tak, Floris F. S.
Bloot, Sanne
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are major drivers of space weather in the Solar System, but their occurrence rate on other stars is unknown. A characteristic (deca-)metric radio burst with a time-frequency drift, known as a Type II radio burst, is a key observational signature of CMEs. We searched a total of 107 years of stellar data using time-frequency spectra that targeted all known stars within 100 parsecs in the LOFAR Two Metre Sky Survey (LoTSS) up to May 2023. This resulted in the largest unbiased search for circularly polarised stellar Type II metric radio bursts to date, with a typical 3$σ$ sensitivity of 2.5 mJy for an integration time of 1 minute. We detected two drifting stellar radio bursts: the published 2-minute burst from the M dwarf StKM 1-1262 and a new 13-minute burst from the M dwarf LP 215-56. The new burst is characterised by a drift rate of $-0.060^{+0.002}_{-0.002}$ MHz s$^{-1}$, an average Stokes V flux density of $-4.5^{+1.4}_{-1.3}$ mJy, and a temporal duration of $63^{+31}_{-11}$ seconds. We constrained the occurrence rate of drifting stellar bursts by calculating Poisson upper and lower limits based on the two drifting bursts. We also fitted a cumulative burst luminosity distribution to the data using the burst detections and the non-detections; this yielded a power law index ($α$) of $-0.7^{+0.9}_{-0.6}$ and a normalisation point (N) of one burst per year with $E>6.8\times10^{13}$ erg s$^{-1}$ Hz$^{-1}$. We find an agreement between this and the cumulative luminosity distribution of decametric SOHO/LASCO solar Type II data ($α= -0.81 \pm 0.06 \pm 0.02$), which suggests that the current scarcity of detected stellar Type II bursts is likely due to limited sensitivity rather than to the intrinsic rarity of these events. Additionally, we identify 19 circularly polarised stellar radio bursts without a time-frequency drift.
title Occurrence rate of stellar Type II radio bursts from a 100 star-year search for coronal mass ejections
topic Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.09296