Quiescent And Flaring Radio Emission From dMe Stars

Abstract

In reviewing radio studies of M-dwarf flare stars one is struck by the curious way in which the field developed. Indeed, that is twenty years old may be the greatest surprise, for if one imagines the largest solar flares occurring at distances comparable to the nearest stars the expected flux densities would be < 10 mJy. Yet, despite the fact that detection thresholds in 1963 were about two orders of magnitude higher than the expected value, Lovell et al. (1963) made extensive observations and reported the. detection of UV Ceti. This remarkable discovery was followed immediately by detections of V371 Ori (Slee et al., 1963) and EV Lac (Lovell et al., 1964). One might have thought that these unexpected discoveries would have spurred significant interest in this new field but they did not.