Evidence for photometric activity cycles in 3203 Kepler stars

Abstract

In recent years it has been claimed that the length of stellar activity cycles is determined by the stellar rotation rate. It is observed that the cycle period increases with rotation period along the so-called active and inactive sequences. In this picture the Sun occupies a solitary position in between the two sequences. Our goal is to measure cyclic variations of the stellar light curve amplitude and the rotation period using four years of Kepler data. Periodic changes of the light curve amplitude or the stellar rotation period are associated with an underlying activity cycle. Using the McQuillan et al. 2014 sample we compute the rotation period and the variability amplitude for each Kepler quarter and search for periodic variations of both time series. To test for periodicity in each stellar time series we consider Lomb-Scargle periodograms and use a selection based on a False Alarm Probability (FAP). We detect amplitude periodicities in 3203 stars between 0.5-6 years covering rotation periods between 1-40 days. Given our sample size of 23,601 stars and our selection criteria that the FAP is less than 5%, this number is almost three times higher than that expected from pure noise. We do not detect periodicities in the rotation period beyond those expected from noise. Our measurements reveal that the cycle period shows a weak dependence on rotation rate, slightly increasing for longer rotation period. We further show that the shape of the variability deviates from a pure sine curve, consistent with observations of the solar cycle. Our measurements do not support the existence of distinct sequences in the P_rot-P_cyc plane, although there is some evidence for the inactive sequence for rotation periods between 5-25 days. Unfortunately, the total observing time is too short to draw sound conclusions on activity cycles with similar length as the solar cycle.