E. Chiang et al., A LAMBDA-3.6 CM RADIO SURVEY OF LOW-MASS, WEAK-LINE T-TAURI STARS IN TAURUS-AURIGA, The Astronomical journal, 111(1), 1996, pp. 355-364
We report on the results of a sensitive survey for lambda 3.6 cm radio
emission from low-mass, weak T Tauri (WTT) stars in the Taurus-Auriga
cloud complex. Targets are stars in the Herbig and Bell Catalog (Herb
ig & Bell 1988) of spectral type K7 or later, and equivalent width of
the H alpha emission line less than 10 Angstrom. Of the 28 such stars
surveyed using the Very Large Array down to detection thresholds of si
milar to 0.1 mJy, 7 (possibly 8) are observed to emit at strengths ran
ging from 0.1 to 2 mJy. Five young radio stars are newly discovered in
our survey: V827 Tau and V710 Tau B are relatively strong sources of
mJy emission, while IW Tau, UX Tau B, and the possible detection LkHa
332-G1 form a new population of relatively weak emitters. Our radio su
rvey and complementary surveys are pooled, and of 42 WTT stars K7 or l
ater in Tau-Aur, 13 are now known to be radio emitters at lambda 6 and
lambda 3.6 cm. Statistical tests to measure the degree of association
between radio luminosity and other stellar attributes have been carri
ed out. Wide binarity (component separations in excess of 0''.13, 18 A
U) appears unrelated to radio emission, as does spectral type. In addi
tion, in contrast to previous work by other workers, we find the radio
-detected and radio-undetected stars to be distributed similarly in th
e Tau-Aur CO cloud. However, we find positive, albeit somewhat weak as
sociations between detectable radio luminosity and (1) relatively low
H alpha emission and (2) relatively young ages as measured on the Hert
zprung-Russell (H-R) diagram. Theoretical isochrones on the H-R diagra
m yield a difference in mean ages of 0.7 Myr between radio-detected an
d radio-undetected populations, and the distributions of ages of the t
wo populations suggest that the mechanism driving the nonthermal radio
emission (thought to involve globally ordered and exceptionally stron
g magnetic fields) operates over times less than or similar to 1 Myr d
uring a relatively early phase of pre-main-sequence evolution. (C) 199
6 American Astronomical Society.