Making Sense of Stellar Rotation in Low Mass Stars

Stellar rotation carries a wealth of information about stellar populations. In particular, the technique of gyrochronology was developed to utilize the spin-down of stars as a function of time as an indicator of stellar age. Gyrochronology has the potential to yield precise ages for large samples of stars, providing unprecedented chronological information for studies of the Milky Way and extrasolar planets. However, the technique is in its adolescence: it has been tested and validated under limited scenarios, but its weaknesses and limitations have hitherto been largely unexplored. As time-domain data has addressed these gaps, we have been confronted with unexpected behavior that signals missing physics in our models and distinct epochs of magnetic behavior over stellar main sequence lives. I will discuss my comparisons of theoretical rotation models to these data, which have yielded insights into the rotational and magnetic lives of stars (and the Sun!), as well as a better understanding of the power and peril of gyrochronology as a tool.