Magnetic Activity and Parameters of 43 Flare Stars in the GWAC Archive

In the archive of the Ground Wide Angle Camera (GWAC), we found 43 white light flares from 43 stars, among which, three are sympathetic or homologous flares, and one of them also has a quasi-periodic pulsation with a period of 13.0 +/- 1.5 minutes. Among these 43 flare stars, there are 19 new active stars and 41 stars that have available TESS and/or K2 light curves, from which we found 931 stellar flares. We also obtained rotational or orbital periods of 34 GWAC flare stars, of which 33 are less than 5.4 days, and ephemerides of three eclipsing binaries from these light curves. Combining with low resolution spectra from LAMOST and the Xinglong 2.16 m telescope, we found that L (H alpha )/L (bol) are in the saturation region in the rotation-activity diagram. From the LAMOST medium-resolution spectrum, we found that Star #3 (HAT 178-02667) has double H alpha emissions which imply it is a binary, and two components are both active stars. Thirteen stars have flare frequency distributions (FFDs) from TESS and/or K2 light curves. These FFDs show that the flares detected by GWAC can occur at a frequency of 0.5 to 9.5 yr(-1). The impact of flares on habitable planets was also studied based on these FFDs, and flares from some GWAC flare stars may produce enough energetic flares to destroy ozone layers, but none can trigger prebiotic chemistry on their habitable planets.

Automated summary

In the archive of the Ground Wide Angle Camera (GWAC), 43 white light flares were found from 43 stars. Among them, three were sympathetic or homologous flares, and one of them exhibited quasi-periodic pulsation. The study also discovered 19 new active stars and identified 931 stellar flares from available TESS and/or K2 light curves.