Evidence for disc regulation in the lowest mass stars of the young stellar cluster NGC 2264

ORCAJO, SANTIAGO; CIEZA, LUCAS A; GAMEN, ROBERTO; PETERSON, DAWN

MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2019 vol. 487 p. 2937 - 2946

0035-8711

In the pre-main-sequence stage, star-disc interactions have been shown to removestellar angular momentum and regulate the rotation periods of stars with M2 andearlier spectral types. Whether disc regulation also extends to stars with later spectraltypes still remains a matter of debate. Here we present a star-disc interaction study ina sample of over 180 stars with spectral types M3 and later (corresponding to stellarmasses≤0.3M) in young stellar cluster NGC 2264. Combining rotation periods fromthe literature, new and literature spectral types, and newly presented deepSpitzerobservations, we show that stars with masses below 0.3Mwith discs also rotateslower than stars without a disc in the same mass regime. Our results demonstratethat disc-regulation still operates in these low-mass stars, although the efficiency ofthis process might be lower than in higher-mass objects. We confirm that stars withspectral types earlier and later than M2 have distinct period distributions and thatstars with spectral types M5 and later rotate even faster than M3 and M4-type stars.