Rosario Lorente

ESA ISO/Akari/Herschel 


My research interest is mainly aimed at the magnetic activity in
late type stars which I develop in collaboration with Benjamin
Montesinos. 

In a first approach we try to reproduce the duration of magnetic
cycles in late type stars. The Sun shows a very well known magnetic
cycle of 11 years and this kind of periodicity has been detected
in other late-type stars as a result of a very long campain
performed in Mount Wilson observatory since the sixties.  The
length of these cycles is from  5 to 15 years depending on the
star.  Our task consists of developing local kinematic dynamo
models which reproduce with success the length and the amplitude
of such cycles. 

Secondly we are trying to predict butterfly diagrams in these
stars. The so called solar butterfly diagram is the pattern that
solar spots follow in their evolution towards the equator along the
solar cycle. Obviously these kinds of diagrams have not been
detected in other solar type stars but we are trying to predict
how they would be in their surfaces. For this we are developing
one-dimensional dynamo models, and we obtain very interesting 
patterns, not purely butterfly-like, which depend not only on the
stellar rotation but also on the differential rotation profiles we
use as a main ingredient.