What Determines the Relative Areas of Spots and Faculae on Sun‐like Stars?

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Abstract
We analyze newly digitized Ca K plage area data extending back to 1915, and also the white-light facular area data beginning in 1874, to investigate further our earlier finding that the area ratio of faculae to spots decreases at increasing activity levels. We find that this ratio decreases in plage as well as facular data, so it cannot be an artifact of the visibility function of limb faculae. The decrease is also accentuated in daily data, compared to annual means; we explain this as a consequence of the different dependences of facular, plage, and spot lifetimes upon their emergent magnetic flux. From this we show that subphotospheric field properties are more likely to determine this ratio, rather than photospheric field diffusion rates. Systematic, cycle-to-cycle variations in its value suggest an origin in fluctuations of the field generation mechanism; specifically, a mechanism that produces a positive correlation between magnetic flux generation efficiency, and relative power in the spatial spectrum at low frequencies. Our results also suggest that main-sequence stars about 50% more magnetically active than the present Sun might exhibit ratio values an order of magnitude lower than current solar values. This evidence strengthens our earlier argument that a rapid shift toward dark photospheric structures in both active regions and network provides the most likely explanation of the recently reported sharp increase of photometric variability in late-type stars somewhat more active than the Sun.