Simultaneous optical photometry and spectroscopy reveal flare dynamics in M-dwarf stars, suggesting postflare phenomena impact habitability.
White-light flares are explosive phenomena accompanied by brightening of continuum from near-ultraviolet to optical, which occur on the Sun and stars. In order to investigate the mechanism of white-light flares, we carried out simultaneous optical photometry (TESS : 6000-10000 Å) and spectroscopy (Seimei Telescope : 4100-8900 Å) of a M-dwarf EV Lac on 2019 September 14. We detected a flare with high-time-cadence (~ 50 sec) spectroscopic observation. At the peak, the continuum of the flare component is well fitted by a blackbody spectrum with temperature of T = 8122 ± 273 K, which is comparable with the results of previous studies that reported the spectral energy distribution of near-ultraviolet to optical during the flare could be approximated by single-temperature blackbody radiation at T ~ 10⁴ K. We also estimated the time evolution of the flare temperature during the decay phase. The radiative energy of this flare within the optical range is 4.4 × 10³² erg, taking into account the time-dependent variation in the decreasing flare temperature and expanding flare area. Furthermore, we detected a delayed increase in the flux of H$α$ after the photometric flare peak, secondary increase, and gradual increase even after the white-light flare ended. Comparison of our results with light curves obtained by the Sun-as-a-star analysis of solar flares indicates that these signals may be due to postflare loops near the stellar limb. Our result about time evolution of white-light continuum will help to gain more insight into the mechanism of white-light flares both on the Sun and stars. Additionally, since extreme ultraviolet radiation from flare loops plays a key role in planetary atmospheric escape, the existence of postflare loops on stellar flares and its time evolution will help future studies about habitability of close-in planets.
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Ichihara et al. (2025) studied this question.
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