Topological modes in stellar oscillations

Abstract

Stellar oscillations can be of topological origin. We reveal this deep and so-far hidden property of stars by establishing a novel parallel between stars and topological insulators. We construct an hermitian problem to derive the expression of the stellar $\text{acoustic-buoyant}$ frequency $S$ of non-radial adiabatic pulsations. A topological analysis then connects the changes of sign of the acoustic-buoyant frequency to the existence of Lamb-like waves within the star. These topological modes cross the frequency gap and behave as gravity modes at low harmonic degree $\ell$ and as pressure modes at high $\ell$. $S$ is found to change sign at least once in the bulk of most stellar objects, making topological modes ubiquitous across the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram. Some topological modes are also expected to be trapped in regions where the internal structure varies strongly locally.

6 pages, 5 figures (+7 pages, 3 figures of appendices)

References in corpus (1)

• Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA)