Warm and cool starspots with opposite polarities

Abstract

Aims. We present a temperature and a magnetic-field surface map of the K2 subgiant of the active binary II Peg. Employed are high resolution Stokes IV spectra obtained with the new Potsdam Echelle Polarimetric and Spectroscopic Instrument (PEPSI) at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). Methods. Fourteen average line profiles are inverted using our iMap code. We have employed an iterative regularization scheme without the need of a penalty function and incorporate a physical 3D description of the surface field vector. The spectral resolution of our data is 130 000 which converts to 20 resolution elements across the disk of II Peg. Results. Our main result is that the temperature features on II Peg closely correlate with its magnetic field topology. We find a warm spot (350 K warmer with respect to the effective temperature) of positive polarity and radial field density of 1.1 kG coexisting with a cool spot (780 K cooler) of negative polarity of 2 kG. Several other cool features are reconstructed containing both polarities and with (radial) field densities of up to 2 kG. The largest cool spot is reconstructed with a temperature contrast of 550 K, an area of almost 10% of the visible hemisphere, and with a multipolar magnetic morphology. A meridional and an azimuthal component of the field of up to ±500 G is detected in two surface regions between spots with strong radial fields but different polarities. A force-free magnetic-field extrapolation suggests that the different polarities of cool spots and the positive polarity of warm spots are physically related through a system of coronal loops of typical height of ≈2 R⋆. While the Hα line core and its red-side wing exhibit variations throughout all rotational phases, a major increase of blue-shifted Hα emission was seen for the phases when the warm spot is approaching the stellar central meridian indicating high-velocity mass motion within its loop. Conclusions. Active stars such as II Peg can show coexisting cool and warm spots on the surface that we interpret resulting from two different formation mechanisms. We explain the warm spots due to photospheric heating by a shock front from a siphon-type flow between regions of different polarities while the majority of the cool spots is likely formed due to the expected convective suppression like on the Sun.