Cool Stellar Activity at Low Radio Frequencies
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Cool Stellar Activity at Low Radio Frequencies Mr. Andrew John Zic A thesis submitted to fulfil requirements for the degree: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Supervisor: Prof. Tara Murphy Co-supervisors: Dr. Christene Lynch & Dr. George Heald Sydney Insititute for Astronomy School of Physics The University of Sydney CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science 2020 Dedicated to the memory of Mr. Daniele Velcich OAM, and Prof. Richard Hunstead. iv Declaration of originality I certify that to the best of my knowledge, the content of this thesis submitted in fulfillment for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) is my own work. This thesis has not been submitted for any degree or other purposes. I certify that the authorship attribution statement on the following page are correct. Mr. Andrew John Zic August 28, 2020 As supervisor for the candidature upon which this thesis is based, I confirm that the originality and authorship attribution statements above and on the next page are correct. Prof. Tara Murphy August 28, 2020 v vi Included papers and attribution Chapters2,3, and4 are peer-reviewed journal articles led by myself, published as Zic et al.(2019a), Zic et al.(2019b), and Zic et al.(2020) respectively. These chapters have been reproduced as published, except for minor typographical and formatting changes to keep consistent style throughout this thesis. Important contributions from others toward the work in this thesis are as follows. Tara Murphy: general supervision and guidance, advice on experimental design and analysis. Christene Lynch: assistance with data reduction and numerical modelling, advice on scientific interpretation and analysis. George Heald: advice on polarimetry, analysis, mod- elling and interpretation. Emil Lenc: reduction of ASKAP observations, and advice on radio data reduction. David L. Kaplan: advice on scientific analysis, interpreta- tion, statistics, and on optical data reduction. Adam Stewart: assistance with data analysis and interpretation. Specific contributions are detailed at the beginning of each chapter. Chapter2 Low-frequency GMRT observations of ultra-cool dwarfs Andrew Zic, Christene Lynch, Tara Murphy, David L. Kaplan, and Poonam Chandra Published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 483, 614, 2019a. Chapter3 ASKAP detection of periodic and elliptically polarized radio pulses from UV Ceti Andrew Zic, Adam Stewart, Emil Lenc, Tara Murphy, Christene Lynch, David L. Kaplan, Aidan Hotan, Craig Anderson, John D. Bunton, Aaron Chippendale, Stacy Mader, and Chris Phillips Published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 488, 559, 2019b. Chapter4 A Flare–Type IV Burst Event from Proxima Centauri and Implications for Space Weather Andrew Zic, Tara Murphy, Christene Lynch, George Heald, Emil Lenc, David L. Kaplan, Iver H. Cairns, David Coward, Bruce Gendre, Helen Johnston, Meredith MacGregor, Danny C. Price, and Michael S. Wheatland Published in The Astrophysical Journal, 905, 23, 2020. vii viii Acknowledgements This thesis represents a significant milestone in my research career and personal life. I am very fortunate to have been given many wonderful opportunities and experiences throughout my candidature, and am grateful for the many people who supported me along the way. I would like to dedicate this thesis to the memory of my Nonno, Mr. Daniele Velcich OAM, and Prof. Richard “Dick” Hunstead, who sadly passed away during the course of my PhD candidature. Firstly, I would like to share some reflections on them both. Nonno was endlessly generous, and had an uncanny ability to bring laughter to any situation with his singing, dancing, and absolutely unique sense of humour. His qualities, and my time spent with him, shaped me as a person. He was much loved by his community, by his family, and is greatly missed. Dick Hunstead was my first research supervisor, when I was a first-year under- graduate lucky enough to partake in the Talented Student Program (TSP) at the USyd School of Physics. Like many other TSP students, this was my first taste of scientific and astronomical research, and played a major role in guiding me to where I am now. Dick remained involved in my research activities from then onwards, mentoring me throughout my Honours, and occasionally through my PhD. I am grateful to have had the chance to work with him, and for his work in making the TSP program successful at The School of Physics, which gave me the opportunity to kick-start my research career. I would also like to pay respects to A/ Prof. Jean-Pierre “JP” Macquart, who sadly passed away in 2020. I will remember him for his lively discussions with his colleagues and myself, his intellect, and for his kind heart. I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my partner, Charlotte, my parents, Julie and John, and my sister, Karina, for their unwavering support, en- couragement, and love throughout the ups and downs of the last few years. I love you all. I am extremely grateful to my supervisor, Tara Murphy. It has been a privilege to work with Tara for the last six years, during undergraduate and Summer research projects, Honours, MOOC course development, teaching, and finally my PhD. Her ongoing support, guidance, and advice has stimulated me to grow as a researcher and as a person. I would also like to deeply thank my co-supervisors Christene Lynch and George Heald for sharing their guidance and expertise with me, for being there to help me through any research problems, and for giving advice on topics of science, careers, and more. It has been wonderful to work with them both. ix x I am glad to have had the opportunity to work closely with several collaborators beyond my supervision group. These include David L. Kaplan, Emil Lenc, Adam Stewart, and Meredith MacGregor. I am also grateful for the discussions and advice from many excellent researchers who I have met throughout my PhD: Craig Ander- son, Marin Anderson, Martin Bell, Ramesh Bhat, Shivani Bhandari, Shari Breen, Iver Cairns, Joe Callingham, David Coward, Shi Dai, Ron Ekers, Bruce Gendre, Gregg Hallinan, Paul Hancock, George Hobbs, Ward Howard, Huib Intema, Helen Johnston, Chris Jordan, Jane Kaczmarek, JP Macquart, Don Melrose, John Mor- gan, Vanessa Moss, Simon Murphy, Bob Mutel, Rachel Osten, Sebastian Pineda, Danny Price, Ryan Shannon, Michael Wheatland, and Stephen White. One of the best parts of undertaking a PhD was having the opportunity to be- friend many fellow students and early-career researchers from within the department, around Australia, and internationally. I thank all of them for making conferences fun, and I look forward to seeing them again in the future. I am also very grateful to all my friends outside of astronomy for being the best pals a PhD student can get, especially when times weren’t so great. I would like to thank my grandparents, Neno and Dedo, Nonna and Nonno, for always welcoming me with a warm hug, and fresh bread or a bowl of soup. I love you, and Nonno, I miss you. I’d also like to thank the rest of my extended family for bringing a great deal of joy into my life, for their support, and for asking fun questions about my research. I extend a special thanks to Dan and Mik for letting me crash at their place during my trips to Perth. I wish the best of luck to the next generation of radio transients students – Andy Wang, Daniele D’Antonio, James Leung, Josh Pritchard, Mark Edwards, Teresa Klinner-Teo, and Yuanming Wang – and I thank them for the enthusiasm and ideas they bring to the group. I am also greatly indebted to Josh for his careful proofreading of this thesis. I’d like to thank all my PhD officemates, past and current: Dougal Dobie, Harry Qiu, Mohammed Rafat, Kat Ross, Troy Whinray, and Charlotte Ward. It’s been a blast working with you, yelling when code breaks, complaining about writing, talking about science problems (whether sensical or not), discussing sport, politics, and all other sorts of shenanigans. I’ll miss being around you all. Dougal, it’s been great to work alongside you under Tara since the early days, and it’s pretty sweet that we get to submit our theses on the same date. Good luck in your new role at Swinburne. Finally, I am very grateful for the support I have received from The University of Sydney, CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science, and the ARC Centre for All-Sky Astrophysics. I also acknowledge support from the Australian Government through the Research Training Program scholarship. Abstract Stellar magnetic fields drive a wide range of energetic phenomena, which have a crucial influence on their properties, evolution, and environment. In this thesis, we investigate the low-frequency radio emission from active low-mass stars. We harness this emission to constrain magnetospheric properties and processes arising from different magnetic activity paradigms. In Chapter2, we present low-frequency observations of a sample of ultra-cool dwarfs. We show that while most ultra-cool dwarfs do not produce low-frequency emission, their magnetospheric properties can be constrained with measurements of the optically-thick side of the quiescent spec- tral energy distribution. In Chapter3, we present Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) observations of the prototypical flare star, UV Ceti. Our observations reveal the presence of periodic, elliptically polarised radio pulses, confirming that large auroral current systems can be produced in the magneto- spheres of active M-dwarfs. In Chapter4, we present results from one night of an 11-night multi-wavelength campaign targeting the nearest stellar neighbour, and magnetically-active planet host, Proxima Centauri. We detected a powerful flare with optical photometric and spectroscopic facilities, accompanied by a solar-like type IV radio burst. By analogy with the solar radio burst paradigm, we suggest that this event indicates a coronal mass ejection leaving the corona, and ongoing electron acceleration associated with a post-eruptive loop arcade.