Stellar J-Harvesting: a novel angular momentum technosignature and first search in the Kepler field
Sahin Torlakcik
astro-ph.SR, astro-ph.GA, astro-ph.IM
Submitted: 2026-07-08
Comments: Preprint. Comments are welcome
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: We introduce Stellar J-Harvesting (SJH), a technosignature in which an engineered system extracts rotational angular momentum from a star.
Terminology
Abstract
We introduce Stellar J-Harvesting (SJH), a technosignature in which an engineered system extracts rotational angular momentum from a star. Unlike a classical Dyson sphere, such a system need not produce a detectable mid-infrared excess; its clearest signature would be a star rotating more slowly than comparable peers. We derive the energy-period relation for this effect, outline several possible coupling channels, and apply a population-relative slow-rotator search to Kepler stars using colour-gravity bins. After eight false-positive filters, the clean sample contains 6,725 FGK main-sequence stars. We find two >4 sigma slow rotators, but Gaia DR3 indicators and WISE imaging point to more ordinary explanations, including unresolved binaries and low metallicity. We therefore make no detection claim and place a conservative pilot upper limit on the occurrence of strong SJH-like signals, f SJH < 4.5e-4. The main result is a search framework: angular-momentum technosignatures are testable with existing stellar-rotation catalogues, and the strongest outliers define concrete targets for spectroscopic, imaging, and radio follow-up.
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