An X-ray superflare are from an infrared protostar

An X-ray outburst from the rapidly accreting young star that illuminates McNeil's nebula

Young, low-mass stars are luminous X-ray sources whose powerful X-ray flares may exert a profound influence over the process of planet formation. The origin of the X-ray emission is uncertain. Although many (or perhaps most) recently formed, low-mass stars emit X-rays as a consequence of solar-like coronal activity, it has also been suggested that X-ray emission may be a direct result of mass accretion onto the forming star. Here we report X-ray imaging spectroscopy observations which reveal a factor approximately 50 increase in the X-ray flux from a young star that is at present undergoing a spectacular optical/infrared outburst (this star illuminates McNeil's nebula). The outburst seems to be due to the sudden onset of a phase of rapid accretion. The coincidence of a surge in X-ray brightness with the optical/infrared eruption demonstrates that strongly enhanced high-energy emission from young stars can occur as a consequence of high accretion rates. We suggest that such accretion-enhanced X-ray emission from erupting young stars may be short-lived, because intense star-disk magnetospheric interactions are quenched rapidly by the subsequent flood of new material onto the star.

Origin of the Universal Correlation between the Flare Temperature and the Emission Measure for Solar and Stellar Flares

We present a theory to explain the observed universal correlation between flare temperature T and emission measure EM=n2V for solar and stellar flares (including solar microflares observed by Yohkoh as well as protostellar flares observed by ASCA), where n is the electron density and V is the volume. The theory is based on a magnetic reconnection model with heat conduction and chromospheric evaporation, assuming that the gas pressure of a flare loop is comparable to the magnetic pressure. This theory predicts the relation EM~B-5T17/2, which explains well the observed correlation between EM and T in the range of 6x106 K < T<108 K and 1044<EM<1055 cm-3 from solar microflares to protostellar flares, if the magnetic field strength B of a flare loop is nearly constant for solar and stellar flares.