Context. Non-radial oscillations, observed in thousands of red giants by the space missions CoRoT and Kepler, allow us to greatly improve our understanding of stellar structure and evolution in cool ...low-mass stars. The currently available Kepler light curves contain an outstanding amount of information, but a detailed analysis of the individual oscillation modes in the observed power spectra, also known as peak bagging, is computationally demanding and challenging to perform on a large number of targets. Aims. Our intent is to perform for the first time a peak bagging analysis on a sample of 19 low-mass low-luminosity red giants observed by Kepler for more than four years. This allows us to provide high-quality asteroseismic measurements that can be exploited for an intensive testing of the physics used in stellar structure models, stellar evolution, and pulsation codes, as well as for refining existing asteroseismic scaling relations in the red giant branch regime. Methods. For this purpose, powerful and sophisticated analysis tools are needed. We exploit the Bayesian code Diamonds, using an efficient nested sampling Monte Carlo algorithm, to perform both a fast fitting of the individual oscillation modes and a peak detection test based on the Bayesian evidence. Results. We find good agreement for the parameters estimated in the background fitting phase with those given in the literature. We extract and characterize a total of 1618 oscillation modes, providing the largest set of detailed asteroseismic mode measurements ever published. We report on the evidence of a change in regime observed in the relation between linewidths and effective temperatures of the stars occurring at the bottom of the red giant branch. We show the presence of a linewidth depression or plateau around νmax for all the red giants of the sample. Lastly, we show a good agreement between our measurements of maximum mode amplitudes and existing maximum amplitudes from global analyses provided in the literature, proving that amplitude scaling relations can be used as empirical tools to improve and simplify the future peak bagging analysis on a larger sample of evolved stars.
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Stellar activity and rotation are tightly related in a dynamo process. Our understanding of this mechanism is mainly limited by our capability of inferring the properties of stellar turbulent ...convection. In particular, the convective turnover time is a key ingredient through the estimation of the stellar Rossby number, which is the ratio of the rotation period and the convective turnover time. In this work, we propose a new calibration of the (
B
−
V
) color index dependence of the convective turnover time, hence, of the stellar Rossby number. Our new calibration is based on the stellar structure properties inferred through the detailed modeling of solar-like pulsators using asteroseismic observables. We show the impact of this calibration via a stellar activity-Rossby number diagram by applying it to a sample of about 40 000 stars observed with
Kepler
and for which the values for the photometric activity proxy
S
ph
and surface rotation periods are available. Additionally, we provide a new calibration for the convective turnover time as function of the (
G
BP
−
G
RP
) color index for allowing applicability in the ESA
Gaia
photometric passbands.
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Context. The effect of metallicity on the granulation activity in stars, and hence on the convective motions in general, is still poorly understood. Available spectroscopic parameters from the ...updated APOGEE-Kepler catalog, coupled with high-precision photometric observations from NASA’s Kepler mission spanning more than four years of observation, make oscillating red giant stars in open clusters crucial testbeds. Aims. We aim to determine the role of metallicity on the stellar granulation activity by discriminating its effect from that of different stellar properties such as surface gravity, mass, and temperature. We analyze 60 known red giant stars belonging to the open clusters NGC 6791, NGC 6819, and NGC 6811, spanning a metallicity range from Fe/H ≃ − 0.09 to 0.32. The parameters describing the granulation activity of these stars and their frequency of maximum oscillation power, νmax, are studied while taking into account different masses, metallicities, and stellar evolutionary stages. We derive new scaling relations for the granulation activity, re-calibrate existing ones, and identify the best scaling relations from the available set of observations. Methods. We adopted the Bayesian code Diamonds for the analysis of the background signal in the Fourier spectra of the stars. We performed a Bayesian parameter estimation and model comparison to test the different model hypotheses proposed in this work and in the literature. Results. Metallicity causes a statistically significant change in the amplitude of the granulation activity, with a dependency stronger than that induced by both stellar mass and surface gravity. We also find that the metallicity has a significant impact on the corresponding time scales of the phenomenon. The effect of metallicity on the time scale is stronger than that of mass. Conclusions. A higher metallicity increases the amplitude of granulation and meso-granulation signals and slows down their characteristic time scales toward longer periods. The trend in amplitude is in qualitative agreement with predictions from existing 3D hydrodynamical simulations of stellar atmospheres from main sequence to red giant stars. We confirm that the granulation activity is not sensitive to changes in the stellar core and that it only depends on the atmospheric parameters of stars.
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Stars of low and intermediate mass that exhibit oscillations may show tens of detectable oscillation modes each. Oscillation modes are a powerful tool to constrain the internal structure and ...rotational dynamics of the star, hence allowing one to obtain an accurate stellar age. The tens of thousands of solar-like oscillators that have been discovered thus far are representative of the large diversity of fundamental stellar properties and evolutionary stages available. Because of the wide range of oscillation features that can be recognized in such stars, it is particularly challenging to properly characterize the oscillation modes in detail, especially in light of large stellar samples. Overcoming this issue requires an automated approach, which has to be fast, reliable, and flexible at the same time. In addition, this approach should not only be capable of extracting the oscillation mode properties of frequency, linewidth, and amplitude from stars in different evolutionary stages, but also able to assign a correct mode identification for each of the modes extracted. Here we present the new freely available pipeline FAMED (Fast and AutoMated pEak bagging with D
IAMONDS
), which is capable of performing an automated and detailed asteroseismic analysis in stars ranging from the main sequence up to the core-helium-burning phase of stellar evolution. This, therefore, includes subgiant stars, stars evolving along the red giant branch (RGB), and stars likely evolving toward the early asymptotic giant branch. In this paper, we additionally show how FAMED can detect rotation from dipolar oscillation modes in main sequence, subgiant, low-luminosity RGB, and core-helium-burning stars.
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Asteroseismology provides global stellar parameters such as masses, radii, or surface gravities using mean global seismic parameters and effective temperature for thousands of low-mass stars (0.8 M⊙ ...< M < 3 M⊙). This methodology has been successfully applied to stars in which acoustic modes excited by turbulent convection are measured. Other methods such as the Flicker technique can also be used to determine stellar surface gravities, but only works for log g above 2.5 dex. In this work, we present a new metric called FliPer (Flicker in spectral power density, in opposition to the standard Flicker measurement which is computed in the time domain); it is able to extend the range for which reliable surface gravities can be obtained (0.1 < log g < 4.6 dex) without performing any seismic analysis for stars brighter than Kp < 14. FliPer takes into account the average variability of a star measured in the power density spectrum in a given range of frequencies. However, FliPer values calculated on several ranges of frequency are required to better characterize a star. Using a large set of asteroseismic targets it is possible to calibrate the behavior of surface gravity with FliPer through machine learning. This calibration made with a random forest regressor covers a wide range of surface gravities from main-sequence stars to subgiants and red giants, with very small uncertainties from 0.04 to 0.1 dex. FliPer values can be inserted in automatic global seismic pipelines to either give an estimation of the stellar surface gravity or to assess the quality of the seismic results by detecting any outliers in the obtained νmax values. FliPer also constrains the surface gravities of main-sequence dwarfs using only long-cadence data for which the Nyquist frequency is too low to measure the acoustic-mode properties.
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ABSTRACT Given the potential of ensemble asteroseismology for understanding fundamental properties of large numbers of stars, it is critical to determine the accuracy of the scaling relations on ...which these measurements are based. From several powerful validation techniques, all indications so far show that stellar radius estimates from the asteroseismic scaling relations are accurate to within a few percent. Eclipsing binary systems hosting at least one star with detectable solar-like oscillations constitute the ideal test objects for validating asteroseismic radius and mass inferences. By combining radial velocity (RV) measurements and photometric time series of eclipses, it is possible to determine the masses and radii of each component of a double-lined spectroscopic binary. We report the results of a four-year RV survey performed with the échelle spectrometer of the Astrophysical Research Consortium's 3.5 m telescope and the APOGEE spectrometer at Apache Point Observatory. We compare the masses and radii of 10 red giants (RGs) obtained by combining radial velocities and eclipse photometry with the estimates from the asteroseismic scaling relations. We find that the asteroseismic scaling relations overestimate RG radii by about 5% on average and masses by about 15% for stars at various stages of RG evolution. Systematic overestimation of mass leads to underestimation of stellar age, which can have important implications for ensemble asteroseismology used for Galactic studies. As part of a second objective, where asteroseismology is used for understanding binary systems, we confirm that oscillations of RGs in close binaries can be suppressed enough to be undetectable, a hypothesis that was proposed in a previous work.
Context. The Kepler space telescope has provided time series of red giants of such unprecedented quality that a detailed asteroseismic analysis becomes possible. For a limited set of about a dozen ...red giants, the observed oscillation frequencies obtained by peak-bagging together with the most recent pulsation codes allowed us to reliably determine the core/envelope rotation ratio. The results so far show that the current models are unable to reproduce the rotation ratios, predicting higher values than what is observed and thus indicating that an efficient angular momentum transport mechanism should be at work. Here we provide an asteroseismic analysis of a sample of 13 low-luminosity low-mass red giant stars observed by Kepler during its first nominal mission. These targets form a subsample of the 19 red giants studied previously, which not only have a large number of extracted oscillation frequencies, but also unambiguous mode identifications. Aims. We aim to extend the sample of red giants for which internal rotation ratios obtained by theoretical modeling of peak-bagged frequencies are available. We also derive the rotation ratios using different methods, and compare the results of these methods with each other. Methods. We built seismic models using a grid search combined with a Nelder-Mead simplex algorithm and obtained rotation averages employing Bayesian inference and inversion methods. We compared these averages with those obtained using a previously developed model-independent method. Results. We find that the cores of the red giants in this sample are rotating 5 to 10 times faster than their envelopes, which is consistent with earlier results. The rotation rates computed from the different methods show good agreement for some targets, while some discrepancies exist for others.
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We investigate different amplitude scaling relations adopted for the asteroseismology of stars that show solar-like oscillations. Amplitudes are among the most challenging asteroseismic quantities to ...handle because of the large uncertainties that arise in measuring the background level in the star's power spectrum. We present results computed by means of a Bayesian inference on a sample of 1640 stars observed with Kepler, spanning from main sequence to red giant stars, for 12 models used for amplitude predictions and exploiting recently well-calibrated effective temperatures from Sloan Digital Sky Survey photometry. We test the candidate amplitude scaling relations by means of a Bayesian model comparison. We find the model having a separate dependence upon the mass of the stars to be largely the most favoured one. The differences among models and the differences seen in their free parameters from early to late phases of stellar evolution are also highlighted.
Context.
Occultations of stars by asteroids are an efficient method to study the properties of minor bodies, and can be exploited as tools to derive very precise asteroid astrometry relative to the ...target star. With the availability of stellar astrometry thanks to the ESA mission
Gaia
, the frequency of good predictions and the quality of the astrometry have been strongly enhanced.
Aims.
Our goal is to evaluate the astrometric performance of a systematic exploitation of stellar occultations, with a homogeneous data set and a given instrument setup. As a reference instrument, we adopt the example of a robotic 50 cm telescope, which is under construction at the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur. We focus in particular on single-chord occultations.
Methods.
We created a data set of simulated light curves, that are modelled by a Bayesian approach. To build the final statistics, we considered a list of predicted events over a long time span, and stellar astrometry from
Gaia
data release 2.
Results.
We derive an acceptable range of observability of the events, with clear indications of the expected errors in terms of timing uncertainties. By converting the distribution of such errors to astrometric uncertainties, we show that the precision on a single chord can reach levels equivalent to the performance of
Gaia
(sub-milli-arcseconds). The errors on the asteroid position are dominated by the uncertainty on the position of the occultation chord with respect to the barycentre of the object.
Conclusions.
The limiting factor in the use of occultation astrometry is not the light curve uncertainty, but our knowledge of the asteroid's shape and size. This conclusion is valid in a wide range of flux drops and magnitudes of the occulted star. The currently increasing knowledge of the shape, spin properties, and size, must be used to mitigate this source of error.
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ABSTRACT
The internal structures and properties of oscillating red-giant stars can be accurately inferred through their global oscillation modes (asteroseismology). Based on 1460 d of Kepler ...observations we perform a thorough asteroseismic study to probe the stellar parameters and evolutionary stages of three red giants in eclipsing binary systems. We present the first detailed analysis of individual oscillation modes of the red-giant components of KIC 8410637, KIC 5640750, and KIC 9540226. We obtain estimates of their asteroseismic masses, radii, mean densities, and logarithmic surface gravities by using the asteroseismic scaling relations as well as grid-based modelling. As these red giants are in double-lined eclipsing binaries, it is possible to derive their independent dynamical masses and radii from the orbital solution and compare it with the seismically inferred values. For KIC 5640750 we compute the first spectroscopic orbit based on both components of this system. We use high-resolution spectroscopic data and light curves of the three systems to determine up-to-date values of the dynamical stellar parameters. With our comprehensive set of stellar parameters we explore consistencies between binary analysis and asteroseismic methods, and test the reliability of the well-known scaling relations. For the three red giants under study, we find agreement between dynamical and asteroseismic stellar parameters in cases where the asteroseismic methods account for metallicity, temperature, and mass dependence as well as surface effects. We are able to attain agreement from the scaling laws in all three systems if we use $\Delta \nu _{\rm ref,emp} = 130.8 \pm 0.9 \,\mu$Hz instead of the usual solar reference value.
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