Properties of small-scale magnetism of stellar atmospheres

Abstract

The magnetic field outside of sunspots is concentrated in the intergranular space, where it forms a delicate filigree of bright ribbons and dots as seen on broad band images of the Sun. We expect this small-scale magnetic field to exhibit a similar behavior in stellar atmospheres. In order to find out more about it, we perform numerical simulations of the surface layers of stellar atmospheres. Here, we report on preliminary results from simulations in the range between 4000 K and 6500 K effective temperature with an initial vertical, homogeneous magnetic field of 50 G strength. We find that the field strength of the strongest magnetic flux concentrations increases with decreasing effective temperature at the height level where the average Rosseland optical depth is one. On the other hand, at the same level, the field is less strong than the thermal equipartition value in the coolest model but assumes superequipartition in the models hotter than 5000 K. While the Wilson depression of the strongest field concentrations is about one pressure scale height in the coolest model, it is more than four times the pressure scale height in the hottest one. We also find that the relative contribution of the bright filigree to the bolometric, vertically directed radiative intensity is most significant for the Teff = 5000 K model (0.6%–0.79%) and least significant for the hottest and coolest models (0.1%–0.46% and 0.14%–0.32%, respectively). This behavior suggests that the effect of the small-scale magnetic field on the photometric variability is more significant for K dwarf stars than for F-type and also M-type stars.