Big flares from small stars: detecting flares from faint low-mass stars with NGTS full-frame images

Abstract

ABSTRACT High-cadence observations of high-energy stellar flares from cool and ultracool dwarfs are often limited by the faint nature of their host stars. Many low-mass sources cannot be detected in quiescence by photometric surveys, meaning they are not targeted for high-cadence observations. This reduces the chances of detecting the rarest high-energy flare events. We used the 13-s cadence full-frame images of Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) to search for flares from M and L dwarfs. This included stars that were too faint to detect in quiescence. We detect 160 flares from 135 stars, with spectral types ranging from M3 to L2.5. We use our sample to study the energies, amplitudes and durations of flares from M and L dwarfs. We measure bolometric flare energies up to 4.5 × 1034 erg for ultracool dwarfs, but conclude that we have not reached a maximum limit to the energy released during white-light flares. We use our results to study the incidence rate of flares of mid- and late-M stars, not accounting for age or binarity, and find that 1.4 ± 0.4 and $9^{+16}_{-3}$ per cent of mid- and late-M stars, respectively, exhibit flares with amplitudes above 1 mag in the NGTS bandpass. Future studies with greater numbers of NGTS fields will expand upon this work.