Asteroseismology is a powerful tool that can precisely characterize the mass, radius, and other properties of field stars. However, our inability to properly model the near-surface layers of stars creates a frequency-dependent frequency difference be
tween the observed and the modeled frequencies, usually referred to as the surface term. This surface term can add significant errors to the derived stellar properties unless removed properly. In this paper we simulate surface terms across a significant portion of the HR diagram, exploring four different masses ($M=0.8, 1.0, 1.2$, and $1.5$ M$_odot$) at five metallicities ($[rm{Fe/H}]=0.5, 0.0, -0.5 ,-1.0, and -1.5$) from main sequence to red giants for stars with $T_{rm{eff}}<6500 K$ and explore how well the most common ways of fitting and removing the surface term actually perform. We find that the two-term model proposed by Ball & Gizon (2014) works much better than other models across a large portion of the HR diagram, including the red giants, leading us to recommend its use for future asteroseismic analyses.
Ring-diagram analysis of acoustic waves observed at the photosphere can provide a relatively robust determination of the sub-surface flows at a particular time under a particular region. The depth of penetration of the waves is related to the size of
the region, hence the depth extent of the measured flows is inversely proportional to the spatial resolution. Most ring-diagram analysis has focused on regions of extent ~15{deg} (180 Mm) or more in order to provide reasonable mode sets for
The solar magnetic activity cycle causes changes in the Sun on timescales that are relevant to human lifetimes. The minimum in solar activity that preceded the current solar cycle (cycle 24) was deeper and quieter than any other recent minimum. Using
data from the Birmingham Solar-Oscillations Network (BiSON), we show that the structure of the solar sub-surface layers during the descending phase of the preceding cycle (cycle 23) was very different from that during cycle 22. This leads us to believe that a detailed examination of the data would have led to the prediction that the cycle-24 minimum would be out of the ordinary. The behavior of the oscillation frequencies allows us to infer that changes in the Sun that affected the oscillation frequencies in cycle 23 were localized mainly to layers above about 0.996Rsun, depths shallower than about 3000 km. In cycle 22, on the other hand, the changes must have also occurred in the deeper-lying layers.
The successful launches of the CoRoT and Kepler space missions have led to the detections of solar-like oscillations in large samples of red-giant stars. The large numbers of red giants with observed oscillations make it possible to investigate the p
roperties of the sample as a whole: ensemble asteroseismology. In this article we summarise ensemble asteroseismology results obtained from data released by the Kepler Science Team (~150,000 field stars) as presented by Hekker et al. (2011b) and for the clusters NGC 6791, NGC 6811 and NGC 6819 (Hekker et al. 2011a) and we discuss the importance of such studies.
We present initial results on some of the properties of open clusters NGC 6791 and NGC 6819 derived from asteroseismic data obtained by NASAs Kepler mission. In addition to estimating the mass, radius and log g of stars on the red-giant branch of the
se clusters, we estimate the distance to the clusters and their ages. Our model-independent estimate of the distance modulus of NGC 6791 is (m-M)_0= 13.11pm 0.06. We find (m-M)_0= 11.85pm 0.05 for NGC 6819. The average mass of stars on the red-giant branch of NGC 6791 is 1.20 pm 0.01 M_sun, while that of NGC 6819 is 1.68pm 0.03M_sun. It should be noted that we do not have data that cover the entire red-giant branch and the actual mass will be somewhat lower. We have determined model-dependent estimates of ages of these clusters. We find ages between 6.8 and 8.6 Gyr for NGC 6791, however, most sets of models give ages around 7Gyr. We obtain ages between 2 and 2.4 Gyr for NGC 6819.
Asteroseismology of stars in clusters has been a long-sought goal because the assumption of a common age, distance and initial chemical composition allows strong tests of the theory of stellar evolution. We report results from the first 34 days of sc
ience data from the Kepler Mission for the open cluster NGC 6819 -- one of four clusters in the field of view. We obtain the first clear detections of solar-like oscillations in the cluster red giants and are able to measure the large frequency separation and the frequency of maximum oscillation power. We find that the asteroseismic parameters allow us to test cluster-membership of the stars, and even with the limited seismic data in hand, we can already identify four possible non-members despite their having a better than 80% membership probability from radial velocity measurements. We are also able to determine the oscillation amplitudes for stars that span about two orders of magnitude in luminosity and find good agreement with the prediction that oscillation amplitudes scale as the luminosity to the power of 0.7. These early results demonstrate the unique potential of asteroseismology of the stellar clusters observed by Kepler.
We compute the p-mode oscillation frequencies and frequency splittings that arise in a two-dimensional model of the Sun that contains toroidal magnetic fields in its interior.
Helioseismic techniques such as ring-diagram analysis have often been used to determine the subsurface structural differences between solar active and quiet regions. Results obtained by inverting the frequency differences between the regions are usua
lly interpreted as the sound-speed differences between them. These in turn are used as a measure of temperature and magnetic-field strength differences between the two regions. In this paper we first show that the sound-speed difference obtained from
