  Observations show that faster-rotating stars tend to have stronger magnetic
activity and shorter magnetic cycles. The cyclical magnetic activity of the Sun
and stars is believed to be driven by the dynamo process. The success of the
Babcock-Leighton (BL) dynamo in understanding the solar cycle suggests an
important role that starspots could play in stellar magnetic cycles. We aim at
extending the BL mechanism to solar-mass stars with various rotation rates and
explore the effects of emergence properties of starspots in latitudes and tilt
angles on stellar magnetic cycles. We adopt a kinematic BL-type dynamo model
operating in the bulk of the convection zone. The profiles of the large-scale
flow fields are from the mean-field hydrodynamical model for various rotators.
The BL source term in the model is constructed based on the rotation dependence
of starspots emergence. That is, faster rotators have starspots at higher
latitudes with larger tilt angles.Faster rotators have poloidal flux appearing
closer to about $\pm55^\circ$ latitudes, where the toroidal field generation
efficiency is the strongest because of the strongest latitudinal differential
rotation there. It takes a shorter time for faster rotators to transport the
surface poloidal field from their emergence latitude to the $\pm 55^\circ$
latitudes of efficient $\Omega$-effect thus shortening their magnetic cycles.
The faster rotators operate in a more supercritical regime due to a stronger BL
$\alpha$-effect relating to the tilt angles, which leads to stronger saturated
magnetic fields and a coupling of the poloidal field between two hemispheres
more difficult. Thus the magnetic field parity shifts from the hemispherically
asymmetric mixed mode to quadrupole, and further to dipole when a star spins
down. The emergence of starspots plays an essential role in the large-scale
stellar dynamo.
