Title: A Search for Non-Thermal Hard X-ray Emission from Magnetically Active Stars
Proposal ID: 0120244
Subject category: Others
Principal investigator: Guedel
Institute: Paul Scherrer Institut
Abstract
Magnetically active stars are among the most ubiquitous high-energy
sources in the observable sky, yet they
have been studied predominantly
in the soft X-ray range below 10 keV where thermal coronal plasma is
the
predominant source of photons. However, both solar analogy and the
presence of strong non-thermal
synchrotron emission from active stellar
sources suggest the presence of a large population of non-thermal
electrons out to MeV energies. They are expected to produce a
strong non-thermal bremsstrahlung continuum
above 10-20 keV. We propose
here a novel investigation to search for non-thermal hard X-ray emission
stellar sources by combining results from several instruments on board
of INTEGRAL, together with radio
observations with the Very Large
Array. The results will be important to assess the role of
accelerated
particles in the primary energy release in stellar coronae as well
as their role in coronal
heating.