SIMBAD references

The intermediate period gap, discovered by Kepler, is an observed dearth of stellar rotation periods in the temperature-period diagram at ∼20 days for G dwarfs and up to ∼30 days for early-M dwarfs. However, because Kepler mainly targeted solar-like stars, there is a lack of measured periods for M dwarfs, especially those at the fully convective limit. Therefore it is unclear if the intermediate period gap exists for mid- to late-M dwarfs. Here, we present a period catalog containing 40,553 rotation periods (9535 periods >10 days), measured using the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF). To measure these periods, we developed a simple pipeline that improves directly on the ZTF archival light curves and reduces the photometric scatter by 26%, on average. This new catalog spans a range of stellar temperatures that connect samples from Kepler with MEarth, a ground-based time-domain survey of bright M dwarfs, and reveals that the intermediate period gap closes at the theoretically predicted location of the fully convective boundary (G_BP - G_RP ∼ 2.45 mag). This result supports the hypothesis that the gap is caused by core-envelope interactions. Using gyro-kinematic ages, we also find a potential rapid spin-down of stars across this period gap.