Speaker
Description
Magnetic activity is a fundamental property of cool stars with convective envelopes and a key driver of their variability. Our physical understanding of stellar magnetic activity is rooted in the Sun, where high-resolution observations have revealed how magnetic field modifies near-surface convection leading to the formation of different magnetic features such as dark sunspots and bright faculae. State-of-the-art magnetohydrodynamic simulations of stellar atmospheres, combined with detailed radiative transfer calculations, now allow us to model magnetic features from first principles and, crucially, to extend the solar-based framework to other stars. This extension has become particularly timely given the wealth of high-precision stellar observations produced by exoplanet missions and surveys, which have uncovered a rich variety of activity signatures caused by stellar surface magnetic features. These signatures are both a blessing and a curse: they offer invaluable diagnostics of stellar magnetism while directly interfering with the detection and characterization of exoplanets. In this talk, I will present recent efforts to model and interpret them within a unified modeling framework connecting solar and stellar approaches.