M dwarfs X-ray activity and rotation relations

We then fit the relation between LX-Prot using three different mass bins to separate partially and fully convective stars. We found a steeper slope in the unsaturated regime for fully convective stars and a nonconstant LX level in the saturated regime for all masses. In the LX/Lbol-R_O_ space we discovered a remarkable double gap that might be related to a discontinuous period evolution.

Then we combined the evolution of Prot predicted by angular momentum evolution models with our new results on the empirical LX-Prot relation to provide an estimate for the age decay of X-ray luminosity. We compare predictions of this relationship with the actual X-ray luminosities of M stars with known ages from 100Myr to a few billion years. We find remarkably good agreement between the predicted LX and the observed values for partially convective stars.

However, for fully convective stars at ages of a few billion years, the constructed LX-age relation overpredicts the X-ray luminosity because the angular momentum evolution model underpredicts the rotation period of these stars. Finally, we examine the effect of different parameterizations for the Rossby number (R_O_) on the shape of the activity-rotation relation in LX/Lbol-R_O_ space, and we find that the slope in the unsaturated regime and the location of the break point of the dual power-law depend sensitively on the choice of R_O_.