The overall evolution of low-mass stars is heavily influenced by the processes occurring in the stellar interior. In particular, mixing processes in convectively unstable zones and overshooting regions affect the resulting observables and main sequence lifetime. We study the effects of different convective boundary definitions and mixing prescriptions in convective cores of low-mass stars, to discriminate the existence, size, and evolutionary stage of the central mixed zone by means of asteroseismology. We implemented the Ledoux criterion for convection in our stellar evolution code, together with a time-dependent diffusive approach for mixing of elements when semiconvective zones are present. We compared models with masses ranging from 1 M* to 2 M* computed with two different criteria for convective boundary definition and including different mixing prescriptions within and beyond the formal limits of the convective regions. Using calculations of adiabatic oscillations frequencies for a large set of models, we developed an asteroseismic diagnosis using only l=0 and l=1 modes based on the ratios of small to large separations r01 and r10 defined by Roxburgh & Vorontsov (2003). These variables are almost linear in the expected observable frequency range, and we show that their slope depends simultaneously on the central hydrogen content, the extent of the convective core, and the amplitude of the sound-speed discontinuity at the core boundary. By considering about 25 modes and an accuracy in the frequency determinations as expected from the CoRoT and Kepler missions, the technique we propose allows us to detect the presence of a convective core and to discriminate the different sizes of the homogeneously mixed central region without the need of a strong a priori for the stellar mass.
We perform an asteroseismological study on the DAV star G117-B15A on the basis of a modern set of fully evolutionary DA white dwarf models that have consistent chemical profiles at the core and the envelope. We found an asteroseismological model for G117-B15A that closely reproduces its observed pulsation periods. Then, we use the most recently measured value of the rate of period change for the dominant mode of this pulsating star to impose a preliminary upper limit to the mass of the axion.
In previous work we identified six Sun-like stars observed by Kepler with exceptionally clear asteroseismic signatures of rotation. Here, we show that five of these stars exhibit surface variability suitable for measuring rotation. In order to further constrain differential rotation, we compare the rotation periods obtained from light-curve variability with those from asteroseismology. The two rotation measurement methods are found to agree within uncertainties, suggesting that radial differential rotation is weak, as is the case for the Sun. Furthermore, we find significant discrepancies betw…
The detection of mixed oscillation modes offers a unique insight into the internal structure of core helium burning (CHeB) stars. The stellar structure during CHeB is very uncertain because the growth of the convective core, and/or the development of a semiconvection zone, is critically dependent on the treatment of convective boundaries. In this study we calculate a suite of stellar structure models and their non-radial pulsations to investigate why the predicted asymptotic g-mode $\ell = 1$ period spacing $ΔΠ_1$ is systematically lower than is inferred from Kepler field stars. We find that o…
Dark photons are particles invoked in some extensions of the Standard Model which could account for at least part of the dark matter content of the Universe. It has been proposed that the production of dark photons in stellar interiors could happen at a rate that depends on both, the dark photon mass and its coupling to Standard Model particles (the kinetic mixing parameter $χ$). In this work we aim at exploring the impact of dark photon productions in the stellar core of solar mass RGB stars during late evolutionary phases. We demonstrate that near the so-called RGB bump, dark photons product…
The unprecedented quality of the asteroseismic data of solar-type stars made available by space missions such as NASA's Kepler telescope are making it possible to explore stellar interior structures. This offers possibilities of constraining stellar core properties (such as core sizes, abundances, and physics) paving the way for improving the precision of the inferred stellar ages. We employ 16 Cyg A and B as our benchmark stars for an asteroseismic study in which we present a novel approach aimed at selecting from a sample of acceptable stellar models returned from Forward Modelling technique…
The efficiency of the transport of angular momentum and chemical elements inside intermediate-mass stars lacks proper calibration, thereby introducing uncertainties on a star's evolutionary pathway. Improvements require better estimation of stellar masses, evolutionary stages, and internal mixing properties. We aim to develop a neural network approach for asteroseismic modelling and test its capacity to provide stellar masses, ages, and overshooting parameter for a sample of 37 $γ$ Doradus stars. Here, our goal is to perform the parameter estimation from modelling of individual periods measure…
Context: Constraints on the internal rotation of red giants are now available thanks to asteroseismic observations. Preliminary comparisons with rotating stellar models indicate that an undetermined additional process for the internal transport of angular momentum is required in addition to purely hydrodynamic processes. Aims: We investigate how asteroseismic measurements of red giants can help us characterize the additional transport mechanism. Methods: We first determine the efficiency of the missing transport mechanism for the low-mass red giant KIC 7341231 by computing rotating models that…
New insights on stellar evolution and stellar interior physics are being made possible by asteroseismology, the study of stars by the observation of their natural, resonant oscillations. Asteroseismology is making significant contributions to our understanding of solar-type stars, in great part due to the exquisite data that have been made available by NASA's Kepler space telescope. Of particular interest is the synergy between asteroseismology and exoplanetary science. Herein I will review recent contributions from asteroseismology to the determination of fundamental properties of Kepler exop…
The treatment of convective boundaries during core helium burning is a fundamental problem in stellar evolution calculations. In Paper~I we showed that new asteroseismic observations of these stars imply they have either very large convective cores or semiconvection/partially mixed zones that trap g-modes. We probe this mixing by inferring the relative lifetimes of asymptotic giant branch (AGB) and horizontal branch (HB) from $R_2$, the observed ratio of these stars in recent HST photometry of 48 Galactic globular clusters. Our new determinations of $R_2$ are more self-consistent than those of…
The last decade has seen a revolution in the field of asteroseismology - the study of stellar pulsations. It has become a powerful method to precisely characterise exoplanet host stars, and as a consequence also the exoplanets themselves. This synergy between asteroseismology and exoplanet science has flourished in large part due to space missions such as $\textit{Kepler}$, which have provided high-quality data that can be used for both types of studies. Perhaps the primary contribution from asteroseismology to the research on transiting exoplanets is the determination of very precise stellar …
Large-scale stellar surveys coupled with recent developments in magneto-hydrodynamical simulations of the formation of Milky Way-mass galaxies provide an unparalleled opportunity to unveil the physical processes driving the evolution of the Galaxy. We developed a framework to compare a variety of parameters with their corresponding predictions from simulations in an unbiased manner, taking into account the selection function of a stellar survey. We applied this framework to a sample of over 7000 stars with asteroseismic, spectroscopic, and astrometric data available, together with 6 simulation…
Context. The details of the C/O core structure in white dwarf stars has mostly remained inaccessible to the technique of asteroseismology, despite several attempts carried out in the past. Aims. We re-assess the potential of asteroseismology for probing the chemical stratification in white dwarf cores, in light of new highly efficient tools recently developed for that purpose. Methods. Using the forward modeling approach and a new parameterization for the core chemical stratification in ZZ Ceti stars, we test several situations typical of the usually limited constraints available, such as smal…
Hydrodynamical, i.e. multi-dimensional and time-dependent, model atmospheres of late-type stars have reached a high level of realism. They are commonly applied in high-fidelity work on stellar abundances but also allow the study of processes that are not modelled in standard, one-dimensional hydrostatic model atmospheres. Here, we discuss two observational aspects that emerge from such processes, the photometric granulation background and the spectroscopic microturbulence. We use CO5BOLD hydrodynamical model atmospheres to characterize the total granular brightness fluctuations and characteris…
We revisit the Tidally Excited Oscillations (TEOs) in the A-type, main-sequence, eccentric binary KOI-54, the prototype of heartbeat stars. Although the linear tidal response of the star is a series of orbital-harmonic frequencies which are not stellar eigenfrequencies, we show that the non-linearly excited non-orbital-harmonic TEOs are eigenmodes. By carefully choosing the modes which satisfy the mode-coupling selection rules, a period spacing ($ΔP$) pattern of quadrupole gravity modes ($ΔP \approx 2520-2535$ sec) can be discerned in the Fourier spectrum, with a detection significance level o…
Context. The evolution of massive stars is strongly influenced by internal mixing processes such as semiconvection, convective core overshooting, and rotationally induced mixing. None of these is currently well constrained. Aims. We investigate models for massive stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). We aim to constrain the various mixing efficiencies by comparing model results to observations. Methods. We use the stellar evolution code MESA to compute more than 60 grids of detailed evolutionary models for stars with initial masses of 9 to 100 Msol, in each grid assuming different combina…
The cores of luminous B and A-type (BA) supergiant stars are the seeds of later core collapse supernovae. Thus, constraining the near-core conditions in this class of stars can place tighter constraints on the size, mass and chemical composition of supernova remnants. Asteroseismology of these massive stars is one possible approach into such investigations. Recently, Moravveji et al. (2012, hereafter Paper I) extracted 19 significant frequencies from a 6-year radial velocity monitoring or Rigel (βOri, B8 Ia). The periods they determined broadly range from 1.22 to 74.74 days. Based on our diffe…
Very metal-poor halo stars are the best candidates for being among the oldest objects in our Galaxy. Samples of halo stars with age determination and detailed chemical composition measurements provide key information for constraining the nature of the first stellar generations and the nucleosynthesis in the metal-poor regime.} Age estimates are very uncertain and are available for only a small number of metal-poor stars. Here we present the first results of a pilot program aimed at deriving precise masses, ages and chemical abundances for metal-poor halo giants using asteroseismology, and high…
Rotation plays a key role in stellar structure and its evolution. Through transport processes which induce rotational mixing of chemical species and the redistribution of angular momentum, internal stellar rotation influences the evolutionary tracks in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. In turn, evolution influences the rotational properties. Therefore, information on the rotational properties of the deep interior would help to better understand the stellar evolution. However, as the internal rotational profile cannot be measured directly, it remains a major unknown leaving this important aspect…
The asteroseismic modelling of solar-like stars has proved to be valuable in constraining dark matter. In this work we study for the first time the influence of asymmetric dark matter (ADM) in the evolution of a subgiant star (KIC 8228742) by direct comparison with observational data. Both spectroscopic and seismic data are analysed with a new approach to the stellar calibration method, in which DM properties can also be considered as free inputs. In another phase of this study, a calibrated standard stellar model (without DM) is used as the benchmark for DM models. We find that the latter mod…
Asteroseismology offers the prospect of constraining differential rotation in Sun-like stars. Here we have identified six high signal-to-noise main-sequence Sun-like stars in the Kepler field, which all have visible signs of rotational splitting of their p-mode frequencies. For each star, we extract the rotational frequency splitting and inclination angle from separate mode sets (adjacent modes with l=2, 0, and 1) spanning the p-mode envelope. We use a Markov chain Monte Carlo method to obtain the best fit and errors associated with each parameter. We are able to make independent measurements …
The observations of global stellar oscillations of post main-sequence stars by space-based photometry missions allowed to directly determine their internal rotation. These constraints have pointed towards the existence of angular momentum transport processes unaccounted for in theoretical models. Constraining the properties of their internal rotation thus appears as the golden path to determine the physical nature of these missing dynamical processes. We wish to determine the robustness of a new approach to study the internal rotation of post main-sequence stars, using parametric rotation prof…
Recent developments in asteroseismology -- thanks to space-based missions such as {\it CoRoT} and {\it Kepler} -- provide handles on those properties of stars that were either completely inaccessible in the past or only poorly measured. Among several such properties is the surface helium abundance of F and G stars. We used the oscillatory signature introduced by the ionization of helium in the observed oscillation frequencies to constrain the amount of helium settling in F stars. For this purpose, we identified three promising F stars for which the standard models of atomic diffusion predict l…
The study of fundamental properties (such as temperatures, radii, masses, and ages) and interior processes (such as convection and angular momentum transport) of stars has implications on various topics in astrophysics, ranging from the evolution of galaxies to understanding exoplanets. In this contribution I will review the basic principles of two key observational methods for constraining fundamental and interior properties of single field stars: the study stellar oscillations (asteroseismology) and optical long-baseline interferometry. I will highlight recent breakthrough discoveries in ast…
We present a study of 33 {\it Kepler} planet-candidate host stars for which asteroseismic observations have sufficiently high signal-to-noise ratio to allow extraction of individual pulsation frequencies. We implement a new Bayesian scheme that is flexible in its input to process individual oscillation frequencies, combinations of them, and average asteroseismic parameters, and derive robust fundamental properties for these targets. Applying this scheme to grids of evolutionary models yields stellar properties with median statistical uncertainties of 1.2\% (radius), 1.7\% (density), 3.3\% (mas…
Context. Convective regions in stellar models are always associated with uncertainties, for example due to extra-mixing or the possible inaccurate position of the transition from convective to radiative transport of energy. These have a strong impact on stellar models and their fundamental parameters. The most promising method to reduce these uncertainties is to use asteroseismology to derive diagnostics probing the structural characteristics of these regions. Aims. We wish to use custom-made integrated quantities to improve the capabilities of seismology to probe convective regions in stellar…
Theoretical predictions for the core helium burning phase of stellar evolution are highly sensitive to the uncertain treatment of mixing at convective boundaries. In the last few years, interest in constraining the uncertain structure of their deep interiors has been renewed by insights from asteroseismology. Recently, Spruit (2015) proposed a limit for the rate of growth of helium-burning convective cores based on the higher buoyancy of material ingested from outside the convective core. In this paper we test the implications of such a limit for stellar models with a range of initial mass and…
Lithium is extensively known to be a good tracer of non-standard mixing processes occurring in stellar interiors. We present the results of a new large Lithium survey in red giant stars and combine it with surveys from the literature to probe the impact of rotation-induced mixing and thermohaline double-diffusive instability along stellar evolution. We determined the surface Li abundance for a sample of 829 giant stars with accurate Gaia parallaxes for a large sub-sample (810 stars) complemented with accurate Hipparcos parallaxes (19 stars). The spectra of our sample of northern and southern g…
Hot subdwarf B stars (sdBs) are evolved, core helium-burning objects located on the extreme horizontal branch. Their formation history is still puzzling as the sdB progenitors must lose nearly all of their hydrogen envelope during the red-giant phase. About half of the known sdBs are in close binaries with periods from 1.2 h to a few days, a fact that implies they experienced a common-envelope phase. Eclipsing hot subdwarf binaries (also called HW Virginis systems) are rare but important objects for determining fundamental stellar parameters. Even more significant and uncommon are those binari…
The V=4.48 F4 main-sequence star theta Cyg is the brightest star observable in the Kepler spacecraft field-of-view. Short-cadence (58.8 s) photometric data were obtained by Kepler during 2010 June-September. Preliminary analysis shows solar-like oscillations in the frequency range 1200- 2500 microHz. To interpret these data and to motivate further observations, we use observational constraints from the literature to construct stellar evolution and pulsation models for this star. We compare the observed large frequency separation of the solar-like oscillations with the model predictions, and di…
Constraining stellar and orbital co-evolution through ensemble seismology of solar-like oscillators in binary systems -- A census of oscillating red-giants and main-sequence stars in Gaia DR3 binaries
The discovery of pulsations in some low-mass white dwarfs, including the so-called extremely low-mass white dwarfs, has opened the unprecedented opportunity of probing the internal structure of these ancient stars. We present a detailed adiabatic pulsational study of these stars based on a new set of He-core white-dwarf models with masses ranging from $0.1554$ to $0.4352 M_{\odot}$ derived by computing the non-conservative evolution of a binary system consisting of an initially $1 M_{\odot}$ ZAMS star and a $1.4 M_{\odot}$ neutron star. We computed adiabatic radial ($\ell= 0$) and non-radial (…
Pulsations and binarity are both common features of massive stars. The study of pulsating massive stars in eclipsing binary systems hold great potential for constraining stellar structure and evolution theory. However, prior to the all-sky Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, few such systems had been discovered or studied in detail. We have inspected the TESS light curves of a large number of eclipsing binaries known to contain high-mass stars, and compiled a list of 18 objects which show intrinsic variability. The light curves were modelled both to determine the physical pro…
Context. Asteroseismology is an effcient tool not only for testing stellar structure and evolutionary theory but also constraining the parameters of stars for which solar-like oscillations are detected, presently. As an important southern asteroseismic target, Tau Ceti, is a metal-poor star. The main features of the oscillations and some frequencies of ? Ceti have been identified. Many scientists propose to comprehensively observe this star as part of the Stellar Observations Network Group. Aims. Our goal is to obtain the optimal model and reliable fundamental parameters for the metal-poor sta…
We have measured solar-like oscillations in red giants using time-series photometry from the first 34 days of science operations of the Kepler Mission. The light curves, obtained with 30-minute sampling, reveal clear oscillations in a large sample of G and K giants, extending in luminosity from the red clump down to the bottom of the giant branch. We confirm a strong correlation between the large separation of the oscillations (Delta nu) and the frequency of maximum power (nu_max). We focus on a sample of 50 low-luminosity stars (nu_max > 100 muHz, L <~ 30 L_sun) having high signal-to-noise ra…
