A volume-limited survey for radio-loud M-dwarfs with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder

M-dwarfs are cool, low mass stars that comprise 70% of the stars in the Galaxy. Some M-dwarfs are known sources of radio emission which probes their stellar magnetospheres. The latest generation of radio telescopes is providing new insights into radio emission of M-dwarfs. Though circularly polarised searches reduce the instances of coincident detections, they may still bias our understanding by excluding sources with low to moderate degrees of circular polarisation. In this thesis, I perform the first widefield radio survey which combines a Stokes I survey of radioemitting M-dwarfs with Stokes V information and variability with the Australia Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) as part of the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS), which covers the Southern sky below a declination of +41 ◦ at a frequency of 888 MHz. I crossmatched the RACS catalogue with stars in the Gaia DR2 catalogue within 200 pc and then used colour-colour cuts to restrict the sample to M-dwarfs. I identified 21 radio-loud M-dwarfs, with 12 having no previously reported radio emission. Seventeen of the radio-loud M-dwarfs are highly circularly polarised, with the remaining four having no circularly polarised component in RACS. I discuss the constraints on the nature of the detected radio emission using follow-up observations from phase one of ASKAP’s Variable and Slow Transients Pilot Survey (VAST) and the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA). I discuss the implications of our findings for future radio surveys, in particular the upcoming full VAST survey