Introduction

1 Introduction

One of the reasons why the physics of magnetic fields are so attractive but poorly understood probably is that magnetic fields are invisible. Both, the detection of magnetic fields and the interpretation of field measurements connect a variety of research fields because magnetic effects are manifold and measurement processes involve a number of sophisticated techniques and unknowns. In the stellar context, magnetic fields are believed to be the reason why young stars can accrete material from their surrounding disk, they rule the evolution of angular momentum, and the stellar dynamo converts kinetic into thermal energy that appears in the many facets of stellar activity.

The observation of stellar magnetic fields is difficult because they are not directly visible, but also because we have only a very limited idea about the nature of the fields that may exist in stars other than the Sun. Because no measurement technique is capable of capturing the entire complexity of a stellar magnetic field, observations always only reveal that part of a magnetic field the observing strategy is specialized for – and in most cases it is not entirely clear what that is.

Our imagination of magnetic fields in cool stars rests on observations of the star we can observe in most detail – the Sun. Figure 1

shows an image of the solar surface from SOHO together with a magnetogram taken at the same time during solar maximum in 2001. Groups of cool spots appear where the magnetogram reveals regions of high fields. Interestingly, the fields appear in groups consisting of at least two areas in close proximity and of opposite polarity (for an overview of the solar magnetic field, see, e.g., Solanki et al., 2006 ). Obviously, such groups, if they exist, cannot be resolved in other stars where generally we can only observe the light integrated from the whole projected stellar surface.

Figure 1: Images of the Sun taken with the SOHO (ESA & NASA) satellite. Cool sunspots appear as dark areas in the visible light image (left). They correspond to magnetic areas seen as black or white areas in the magnetogram (right; black and white show magnetic areas of different polarity). The magnetic field is arranged in spot groups of opposite polarity.

Although it serves as reference for cool-star magnetism, the solar magnetic field is not at all easy to understand in all its details. The mean unsigned magnetic flux density on the solar surface is often reported to be on the order of 10 G using Zeeman splitting diagnostics. However, Trujillo Bueno et al. (2004

) reported average flux densities one order of magnitude higher employing a more sophisticated three-dimensional radiative transfer approach taking into account the consequences of the Hanle effect. The solar magnetic field is not the subject of this review, but the example shows how confusing even the magnetic field of the Sun can be if reduced to a single number. The reason for this is the wide range in strengths and scales that are probed using different methods.

Fortunately, not all stars have average magnetic flux densities as low as the solar one, and we absolutely can go out and look for fields that are stronger or have a more obvious observational signature than the solar field. Nevertheless, one has to keep in mind that all observations can only reveal the type of field they are sensitive to, and it is often more difficult to find out what that means than to actually carry out the observation. This article reviews the existing measurements of magnetic fields in cool stars. I define these to be stars with efficient convection in their surface layers, i.e., stars later than spectral type early F. Since F-type stars tend to be fast rotators, which makes a magnetic field detection even more difficult, a review on magnetic fields in cool stars essentially narrows down to stars cooler than the Sun. Magnetic field measurements are available for late-type dwarfs and also for some giants. One of the main motivations for investigating stellar magnetic fields is to understand the solar dynamo by assuming that the same mechanism works in other stars but runs with a different set of parameters. By studying magnetic fields in a sample of stars with different temperature, convective velocities, and rotation rates, one can hope to shed light on the fundamental mechanisms of a presumably universal cool-star dynamo mechanism.

A particularly interesting class of stars are cool stars of spectral type M. Covering the mass spectrum between $∼ 0.6$ and $0.1 M ⊙$ , M dwarfs are the most frequent type of stars, which makes them very interesting by themselves. Furthermore, within this mass range, the stars can have very different physical properties rendering them very attractive targets for comparative studies. The transition from partly convective (sun-like) to fully convective stars happens in the M dwarf regime, probably around spectral type M3/M4. This area is in the center of interest for dynamo theory because the tachocline is believed to be the place where at least one important part of the solar dynamo is located. Furthermore, atmospheres of M dwarfs can be very different and both molecules and dust gain importance as the temperature drops toward late spectral types. It is important to understand how this influences magnetic field generation, and how the coupling between magnetic fields and stellar atmospheres changes. Towards even cooler objects, brown dwarfs are objects with masses below $0.08 M ⊙$ that are described as failed stars because they do not burn hydrogen in their core. Although they are not considered stars, their physical properties are very similar to low-mass stars, especially close to the surface. I will, therefore, include them in the discussion of stellar magnetic fields.