  The high-energy radiation emitted by young stars can have a strong influence
on their rotational evolution at later stages. This is because internal
photoevaporation is one of the major drivers of the dispersal of circumstellar
disks, which surround all newly born low-mass stars during the first few
million years of their evolution. Employing an internal EUV/X-ray
photoevaporation model, we have derived a simple recipe for calculating
realistic inner disk lifetimes of protoplanetary disks. This prescription was
implemented into a magnetic morphology-driven rotational evolution model and is
used to investigate the impact of disk-locking on the spin evolution of
low-mass stars. We find that the length of the disk-locking phase has a
profound impact on the subsequent rotational evolution of a young star, and the
implementation of realistic disk lifetimes leads to an improved agreement of
model outcomes with observed rotation period distributions for open clusters of
various ages. However, for both young star-forming regions tested in our model,
the strong bimodality in rotation periods that is observed in hPer could not be
recovered. hPer is only successfully recovered, if the model is started from a
double-peaked distribution with an initial disk fraction of $65\,\%$. However,
at an age of only $\sim 1\,\mathrm{Myr}$, such a low disk fraction can only be
achieved if an additional disk dispersal process, such as external
photoevaporation, is invoked. These results therefore highlight the importance
of including realistic disk dispersal mechanisms in rotational evolution models
of young stars.
