Magnetism of stars: the present and the future of ground and space spectropolarimetry

摘要

For more than half a century, magnetic fields have been known to exist in stars. During this time, most efforts were focused on establishing the strength and geometry of fields in stars. The past two decades have seen remarkable advances in spectropolarimetric instrumentation. Enormous progress has been made on observing stellar magnetism in stars at all major stages of stellar evolution, from the pre-main sequence to the main sequence stage, the giant and AGB stages. Recent spectropolarimetric instruments have made it possible to routinely detect stellar magnetic fields as weak as 1 G and even less. As a result, interest is moving towards understanding the origin and evolution of stellar magnetic fields, understanding of the role of magnetic fields in the manifestations of stellar activity and star-planet magnetic interactions and so on. These new challenges require even more precise instruments and techniques. The era of stabilized spectropolarimetry comes. We review the present and the future of ground-based and space spectropolarimetry.