The winds of young Solar-type stars in the Hyades

Abstract

ABSTRACT Stellar winds govern the spin-down of Solar-type stars as they age, and play an important role in determining planetary habitability, as powerful winds can lead to atmospheric erosion. We calculate 3D stellar wind models for five young Solar-type stars in the Hyades cluster, using TOUPIES survey stellar magnetograms and state-of-the-art Alfvén wave-driven wind modelling. The stars have the same 0.6 Gyr age and similar fundamental parameters, and we account for the uncertainty in and underestimation of absolute field strength inherent in Zeeman–Doppler imaging by adopting both unscaled and scaled (by a factor of five) field strengths. For the unscaled fields, the resulting stellar wind mass-loss is 2–4 times greater and the angular momentum loss 2–10 times greater than for the Sun today, with the scaled results correspondingly greater. We compare our results with a range published of wind models and for the Alfvén wave-driven modelling see evidence of mass-loss saturation at ${\sim 10} \dot{M}_{\odot }$.