Asteroseismology of red giants

Abstract

Red-giant stars are emerging as one of the most interesting areas of space asteroseismology. Even a relatively basic analysis leads to the determination of the global parameters of the stars, such as their mass and radius, and the very extensive space-based data now available for a large number of stars allow detailed investigation of the deep interiors of red giants, including distinguishing between stars that do and do not have helium fusion in the core, on the basis of periods of gravity waves partially trapped in the core. Here I review the theoretical background for these new developments and provide a simple explanation for the effect on the period spacing of central helium fusion.

This chapter has been prepared for publication in "Asteroseismology", Canary Islands Winter School of Astrophysics, Volume XXII, edited by Pere L. Pallé, published by Cambridge University Press

References in corpus (1)

• Characterisation of red-giant stars in the public Kepler data

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Asteroseismology of the open clusters NGC 6791, NGC 6811, and NGC 6819 from nineteen months of Kepler photometry
• Atmospheric parameters and chemical properties of red giants in the CoRoT asteroseismology fields
• Stellar model fits and inversions
• Automated determination of g-mode period spacing of red-giant stars
• Kepler asteroseismology of red-giant stars
• An abundance study of the red giants in the seismology fields of the CoRoT satellite
• Dive into the heart of red giant stars to better understand our Galaxy