Asteroseismology Across the Hertzsprung–Russell Diagram

Abstract

Asteroseismology has grown from its beginnings three decades ago to a mature field teeming with discoveries and applications. This phenomenal growth has been enabled by space photometry with precision 10–100 times better than ground-based observations, with nearly continuous light curves for durations of weeks to years, and by large-scale ground-based surveys spanning years designed to detect all time-variable phenomena. The new high-precision data are full of surprises, deepening our understanding of the physics of stars.

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This review explores asteroseismic developments from the past decade primarily as a result of light curves from the Kepler and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite space missions for massive upper main sequence OBAF stars, pre-main-sequence stars, peculiar stars, classical pulsators, white dwarfs and subdwarfs, and tidally interacting close binaries.

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The space missions have increased the numbers of pulsators in many classes by an order of magnitude.

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Asteroseismology measures fundamental stellar parameters and stellar interior physics—mass, radius, age, metallicity, luminosity, distance, magnetic fields, interior rotation, angular momentum transfer, convective overshoot, core-burning stage—supporting disparate fields such as galactic archeology, exoplanet host stars, supernovae progenitors, gamma-ray and gravitational wave precursors, close binary star origins and evolution, and standard candles.

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Stars are the luminous tracers of the Universe. Asteroseismology significantly improves models of stellar structure and evolution on which all inference from stars depends.