Today's Colloquium: Radio emission of binary stars in the AB Doradus moving group

© Rebecca Azulay

We present a study of the radio emission and kinematics of a sample of stars belonging to the AB Doradus moving group through VLA and VLBI observations at frequencies of 5 and 8.4 GHz. The main aim of our study is to obtain precise estimates of the dynamical mass of young, low-mass stars, which in combination with photometric measurements provide precise benchmarks for calibrating pre-main-sequence (PMS) stellar evolutionary models.

Calibration of PMS models appears essential as they are widely used to predict the masses of low mass objects as brown dwarfs and planets.

Previous studies show that model predictions are in disagreement with experimental results, underpredicting the dynamical masses by 10-30%, for masses below 1.2 solar masses. Among the stars included in our study, we emphasize the results obtained in two of them: AB Dor B and HD 160934.