2009MNRAS.398.1495V

We study the differences in chromospheric structure induced in K stars by stellar activity, to expand our previous work for G stars, including the Sun as a star. We selected six stars of spectral type K with 0.82 < B - V < 0.90, including the widely studied EpsilonEridani and a variety of magnetic activity levels. We computed chromospheric models for the stars in the sample, in most cases in two different moments of activity. The models were constructed to obtain the best possible match with the Caii K and the Hβ observed profiles. We also computed in detail the net radiative losses for each model to constrain the heating mechanism that can maintain the structure in the atmosphere. We find a strong correlation between these losses and S_CaII, the index generally used as a proxy for activity, as we found for G stars.