Kepler data from G-, K-, and M-type stars are used to study conditions that lead to superflares with energies above 10 34 erg. From the 117,661 stars included, 380 show superflares with a total of 1690 such events. We study whether parameters, like effective temperature or rotation rate, have any effect on the superflare occurrence rate or energy. With increasing effective temperature we observe a decrease in the superflare rate, which is analogous to the previous findings of a decrease in dynamo activity with increasing effective temperature. For slowly rotating stars, we find a quadratic increase of the mean occurrence rate with the rotation rate up to a critical point, after which the rate decreases linearly. Motivated by standard dynamo theory, we study the behavior of the relative starspot coverage, approximated as the relative brightness variation. For faster rotating stars, an increased fraction of stars shows higher spot coverage, which leads to higher superflare rates. A turbulent dynamo is used to study the dependence of the Ohmic dissipation as a proxy of the flare energy on the differential rotation or shear rate. The resulting statistics of the dissipation energy as a function of dynamo number is similar to the observed flare statistics as a function of the inverse Rossby number and shows similarly strong fluctuations. This supports the idea that superflares might well be possible for solar-type G stars.
We use direct numerical simulations of forced MHD turbulence with a forcing function that produces two different signs of kinetic helicity in the upper and lower parts of the domain. We show that the mean flux of magnetic helicity from the small-scale field between the two parts of the domain can be described by a Fickian diffusion law with a diffusion coefficient that is approximately independent of the magnetic Reynolds number and about one third of the estimated turbulent magnetic diffusivity. The data suggest that the turbulent diffusive magnetic helicity flux can only be expected to alleviate catastrophic quenching at Reynolds numbers of more than several thousands. We further calculate the magnetic helicity density and its flux in the domain for three different gauges. We consider the Weyl gauge, in which the electrostatic potential vanishes, the pseudo-Lorenz gauge, where the speed of light is replaced by the sound speed, and the `resistive gauge' in which the Laplacian of the magnetic vector potential acts as resistive term. We find that, in the statistically steady state, the time-averaged magnetic helicity density and the magnetic helicity flux are the same in all three gauges.Comment: 6 pages 5 figure
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