Zeeman-Doppler imaging of five young solar-type stars

Abstract

Context. The magnetic activity of the Sun changes with the solar cycle. Similar cycles are found in other stars as well, but their details are not known to a similar degree. Characterising stellar magnetic cycles is important for the understanding of the stellar and solar dynamos that are driving the magnetic activity. Aims. We present spectropolarimetric observations of five young, solar-type stars and compare them to previous observations, with the aim to identify and characterise stellar equivalents of the solar cycle. Methods. We use Zeeman-Doppler imaging (ZDI) to map the surface magnetic field and brightness of our targets. The magnetic field is decomposed into spherical harmonic expansions, from which we report the strengths of the axisymmetric versus non-axisymmetric and poloidal versus toroidal components, and we compare them to the Rossby numbers of the stars. Results. We present five new ZDI maps of young, solar-type stars from December 2017. Of special interest is the case of V1358 Ori, which had gone through a polarity reversal between our observations and earlier ones. A less evident polarity reversal might also have occurred in HD 35296. There is a preference for a more axisymmetric field, and possibly a more toroidal field, for the more active stars with lower Rossby number, but a larger sample should be studied to draw any strong conclusions from this. For most of the individual stars, the amounts of toroidal and poloidal field have stayed on levels similar to those in earlier observations. Conclusions. We find evidence for a magnetic polarity reversal having occurred in V1358 Ori. An interesting target for future observations is χ1 Ori, which may have a short magnetic cycle of a few years. The correlation between the brightness maps and the magnetic field is mostly poor, which could indicate the presence of small-scale magnetic features of different polarities that cancel one another out and are thus not resolved in our maps.