Differential rotation on active late-type stars observed with Corot

One major topic in studying stellar activity is to explain how phenomena seen on the Sun and stars, and specially magnetic phenomena, depend on stellar properties such as rotation and age. Differential rotation is an important physical process in theories of stellar magnetic field generation. The solar surface differential rotation was initially discovered via the simple method of tracking the rotation rates of individual starspots at different latitudes. Adopting a similar principle, high accuracy light curves of active stars observed with the CoRoT satellite are analyzed using a model based on the rotational modulation of the visibility of active regions.