New Suns in the Cosmos II: differential rotation in Kepler Sun-like stars

The present study reports the discovery of Sun-like stars, namely main-sequence stars with T sub( eff), log g and rotation periods P sub( rot) similar to solar values, presenting evidence of surface differential rotation (DR). An autocorrelation of the time series was used to select stars presenting photometric signal stability from a sample of 881 stars with light curves collected by the Kepler space-borne telescope, in which we have identified 17 stars with stable signals. A simple two-spot model together with a Bayesian information criterion were applied to these stars in the search for indications of DR; in addition, for all 17 stars, it was possible to compute the spot rotation period P, the mean values of the individual spot rotation periods and their respective colatitudes, and the relative amplitude of the DR.