The flow of heat near a starspot

Statistics – Computation

Scientific paper

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Stellar Temperature, Sunspots, Boundary Value Problems, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Convective Heat Transfer, Flow Equations, Heat Flux, Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability, Polytropic Processes, Stellar Envelopes, Stellar Luminosity, Temperature Distribution, Turbulent Diffusion

Scientific paper

The thermal disturbance due to a single starspot of radius R and depth d in a polytropic convective envelope is calculated using a turbulent diffusion approximation. The effect of systematic fluid flows is neglected. Times large compared with the turbulent diffusion time scale and short compared with the Kelvin-Helmholtz time scale are considered so that the heat flow is quasi-static. Of the heat flux blocked by the spot, a fraction is stored in the deeper layers of the envelope and the remaining fraction reappears at the surface. It is concluded that most of the blocked heat flux is stored in the convection zone, in agreement with recent observations of the solar luminosity variation. The results imply that the light variations (in the visual band) in spotted stars can be interpreted directly in terms of the fraction of the projected surface area covered by spots.

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