Living with a Red Dwarf: The Rotation–Age Relationships of M Dwarfs

Abstract

Age is a fundamental stellar property, yet for many stars, it is difficult to reliably determine. For M dwarfs, it has been notoriously so. Due to their lower masses, core hydrogen fusion proceeds at a much slower rate in M dwarfs than it does in more massive stars like the Sun. As a consequence, more customary age determination methods (e.g., isochrones and asteroseismology) are unreliable for M dwarfs. As these methods are unavailable, many have searched for reliable alternatives. The M dwarfs comprise the overwhelming majority of the nearby stellar inventory, which makes the determination of their fundamental parameters even more important. Further, an ever-increasing number of exoplanets are being found to orbit M dwarfs, and recent studies have suggested that they may have a relatively higher number of low-mass planets than other spectral types. Determining the ages of M dwarfs then allows us to better study any hosted exoplanets as well. Fortunately, M dwarfs possess magnetic activity and stellar winds like other cool dwarf stars. This causes them to undergo the spin-down effect (rotating with longer periods) as they age. For this reason, stellar rotation rate has been considered a potentially powerful age determination parameter for over 50 yr. Calibrating reliable age–rotation relationships for M dwarfs has been a lengthy process, but here we present the age–rotation relationships for ∼M0–6.5 dwarfs, determined as part of the Living with a Red Dwarf program. These relationships should prove invaluable for a wide range of stellar astrophysics and exoplanetary science applications.