Kinematics and activity of M dwarfs in LAMOST DR1**Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Abstract

We report on the first investigation into kinematics and chromospheric activity of M dwarfs from the Guo Shou Jing Telescope (also called the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope – LAMOST) data release one (DR1). The sample comprises 71 304 M dwarfs. Their fundamental parameters such as spectral types, radial velocities, important molecular band indices and magnetic activities are measured. Their distances are determined by a spectroscopic parallax relation. Space motion (U, V, W) and Galactocentric cylindrical coordinates (R, θ, Z) for the M dwarfs are also computed. We examine velocity dispersion as a function of height from the Galactic plane and find that all three components of velocity dispersion increase with height as measured with respect to the Galactic plane. The investigation into chromospheric activities along the height from the Galactic plane confirms that M dwarfs closer to the Galactic plane are more likely to be active. We take a pure kinematical approach to select thin disk stars and thick disk stars from our sample, then to investigate the differences in properties between these two populations. Our analysis is in excellent agreement with previous studies and leads to a better understanding of the structure of the Galactic disk.