The exoplanetary magnetosphere extension in Sun-like stars based on the solar wind and solar UV emission

The solar activity in form of coronal mass ejections or solar wind disturbances, such as slow or high speed streams, affects the circumterrestrial electromagnetic environment, with a primary effect on the magnetosphere, compressing and perturbing it. Here, in order to connect the long-term solar activity variations to solar wind properties, we use measurement of a proxy for chromospheric activity, the Ca II K index, and solar wind OMNI data for the time interval 1965-2021, which almost entirely covers the last 5 solar cycles. By using both a cross correlation and a mutual information approach, a 3.6-year mean lag has been found between Ca II K index and solar wind dynamic pressure. This result allows us to obtain a relationship between the solar UV emission and the solar wind dynamic pressure, enabling us to derive the Earth’s magnetospheric extension over the last 5 solar cycles.
Moreover, the advantage of having used the Ca II K index proxy is that the relation found for the Sun can be easily extended to other stars with similar properties (i.e. Sun-like stars). To this scope, the model is then used to study the effect of stellar wind dynamic pressure on the magnetosphere of Earth-like planets orbiting at 1 AU around a sample of Sun-like stars.