The rotation of field stars from CoRoT data

Abstract

We present period measurements of a large sample of field stars in the solar neighbourhood, observed by the COnvection ROtation and planetary Transits (CoRoT) satellite in two different directions of the Galaxy. The presence of a period was detected using the Lomb-Scargle normalized periodogram technique and the autocorrelation analysis. The assessment of the results has been performed through a consistency verification supported by the folded light-curve analysis. The data analysis procedure has discarded a non-negligible fraction of light curves due to instrumental artefacts; however, it has allowed us to identify pulsators and binaries among a large number of field stars. We measure a wide range of periods, from 0.25 to 100d, most of which are rotation periods. The final catalogue includes 1978 periods, with 1727 of them identified as rotational periods, 169 as pulsations and 82 as orbital periods of binary systems. Our sample suffers from selection biases not easily corrected for; thus, we do not use the distribution of rotation periods to derive the age distribution of the main-sequence population. Nevertheless, using rotation as a proxy for age, we can identify a sample of young stars (≤600Myr) that will constitute a valuable sample, supported by further spectroscopic observations, to study the recent star formation history in the solar neighbourhood. © 2012 The Authors Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2012 RAS.