Seismic characterization of red giants going through the Helium-core flash

Abstract

First-ascent red giants with masses below about $2M_{\odot }$ ignite helium in their degenerate core as a flash. Stellar evolution codes predict that the He flash consists of a series of consecutive subflashes. The detection of mixed modes in red giants from space missions CoRoT and Kepler has opened new opportunities to search for stars in this evolution stage. During a subflash, the He burning shell is convective, which splits the cavity of gravity modes in two. We here investigate how this additional cavity modifies the oscillation spectrum of the star. We calculate the asymptotic mode frequencies of stellar models going through a He subflash using the JWKB approximation. To predict the detectability of the modes, we estimate their expected heights, taking into account the effects of radiative damping in the core. Our results are then compared to the oscillation spectra obtained by calculating numerically the mode frequencies during a He subflash. We show that during a He subflash, the detectable oscillation spectrum mainly consists of modes trapped in the acoustic cavity and in the outer g-mode cavity. The spectrum should thus resemble that of a core-helium-burning giant. However, we find a list of clear, detectable features that could enable us to identify red giants passing through a He subflash. In particular, during a He subflash, several modes that are trapped in the innermost g-mode cavity are expected to be detectable. We show that these modes could be identified by their frequencies or by their rotational splittings. Other features, such as the measured period spacing of gravity modes or the location of the H-burning shell within the g-mode cavity could also be used to identify stars going through a He subflash. The features derived in this study can now be searched for in the large datasets provided by the CoRoT and Kepler missions.

25 pages, 20 figures, accepted in A&A

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Tracking the evolution of lithium in giants using asteroseismology: Super-Li-rich stars are almost exclusively young red-clump stars
• Evidence of structural discontinuities in the inner core of red-giant stars
• Asteroseismic signatures of the helium-core flash
• Probing infrared excess connection with Li enhancement among red clump giants
• Multi-cavity gravito-acoustic modes in stars: A general analytical resonance condition
• Parametric models of core-helium-burning stars: structural glitches near the core
• The efficiency of mixed modes for angular momentum transport
• Detailed theoretical analysis of core Helium-burning stars: Mixed mode patterns I. Impact of the He-flash discontinuity and of induced semi-convection