Detailed studies of the Sun have shown that sunspots and solar flares are closely correlated. Photometric data from Kepler/K2 has allowed similar studies to be carried out on other stars. Here, we utilize Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) photometric 2-min cadence of 167 low-mass stars from Sectors 1 to 3 to investigate the relationship between star-spots and stellar flares. From our sample, 90 per cent show clear rotational modulation likely due to the presence of a large, dominant star-spot and we use this to determine a rotational period for each star. Additionally, each low-mass star shows one or more flares in its light curve and using Gaia Data Release 2 parallaxes and SkyMapper magnitudes we can estimate the energy of the flares in the TESS band-pass. Overall, we have 1834 flares from the 167 low-mass stars with energies from 6.0x10^29^ to 2.4x10^35^erg. We find none of the stars in our sample show any preference for rotational phase, suggesting the lack of a correlation between the large, dominant star-spot, and flare number. We discuss this finding in greater detail and present further scenarios to account for the origin of flares on these low-mass stars.

Cone search capability for table J/MNRAS/489/437/table1 (Master file of all TESS flare stars from Sectors 1,2 and 3)

Cone search capability for table J/MNRAS/489/437/tablea1 (Master file of all TESS flare stars from Sectors 1,2 and 3 which did not show any modulation)