Modeling the Photometric Variability of Alpha2 CVn Stars with the NOIRLab Data Lab

Alpha² Canum Venaticorum (α² CVn) variables are strongly magnetic stars with peculiar chemical signatures. They exhibit periodic variability that sometimes yields asymmetrical, double peaked light curves. To delineate the physical processes that produce these anomalous light curves, we used the Data Lab to model the field of an inclined star as a tilted and off-center dipole. We assumed the density of trapped stellar wind particles is proportional to the strength of the field at each location, and we used this to model the optical depth of the cloud as the star rotates on its axis. The light curves derived from the model were compared to real α² CVn light curves from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) dataset. We present the results of the model in this poster.