Gaia Gaps and the Physics of Low-mass Stars. I. The Fully Convective Boundary

The Gaia M-dwarf gap is a significant underdensity of stars observed near M-G = 10.2 in a color-magnitude diagram for stars within 200 pc of the Sun. It has been proposed that the gap is the manifestation of structural instabilities within stellar interiors due to nonequilibrium He-3 fusion prior to some stars becoming fully convective. To test this hypothesis, we use Dartmouth stellar evolution models, MARCS model atmospheres, and simple stellar population synthesis to create synthetic M-G-(G(BP) - G(RP)) color-magnitude diagrams. We confirm that the proposed He-3 instability is responsible for the appearance of the M-dwarf gap. Our synthetic gap shows qualitatively similar features to the observed gap, including its vertical extent in M-G, its slope in the color-magnitude diagram, and its relative prominence at bluer colors as compared to redder colors. Furthermore, corresponding overdensities of stars above the gap are reproduced by the models. While qualitatively similar, the synthetic gap is approximately 0.2 magnitudes bluer, and when this color offset is accounted for, it is 0.16 magnitudes brighter than the observed gap. Our results reveal that the Gaia M-dwarf gap is sensitive to conditions within cores of M-dwarf stars, making the gap a powerful tool for testing the physics of M-dwarf stars and potentially using M dwarfs to understand the local star formation history.

Automated summary

The Gaia M-dwarf gap is a significant underdensity of stars observed in the color-magnitude diagram, possibly caused by structural instabilities within stellar interiors due to nonequilibrium He-3 fusion. Synthetic models were able to reproduce the observed features of the gap, indicating its usefulness for testing the physics of M-dwarf stars.