A Large X-Ray Flare from a Single Weak-Lined T Tauri Star TWA-7 Detected with MAXI GSC

Abstract

Abstract We present a large X-ray flare from a nearby weak-lined T Tauri star TWA-7 detected with the Gas Slit Camera (GSC) on the Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI). The GSC captured X-ray flaring from TWA-7 with a flux of 3 $\times$ 10 $^{-9}\ $ erg cm $^{-2}\ $ s $^{-1}$ in 2–20 keV band during the scan transit starting at 2010-09-07 18:24:30 (UT). The estimated X-ray luminosity at the scan in the energy band is 3 $\times$ 10 $^{32}\ $ erg s $^{-1}$ , indicating that the event is among the largest X-ray flares from T Tauri stars. Since MAXI GSC monitors a target only during a scan transit of about a minute per 92 min orbital cycle, the luminosity at the flare peak might have been higher than that detected. At the scan transit, we observed a high X-ray-to-bolometric luminosity ratio, log $\ L_{\rm X}/L_{\rm bol}$$=$$-$ 0.1 $^{+0.2}_{-0.3}$ ; i.e., the X-ray luminosity is comparable to the bolometric luminosity. Since TWA-7 has neither an accreting disk nor a binary companion, the observed event implies that none of those are essential to generate such big flares in T Tauri stars.