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The detailed modelling of stellar oscillations is a powerful approach to characterising stars. However, poor treatment of systematics in theoretical models leads to misinterpretations of stars. Here we propose a more principled statistical treatment for the systematics to be applied to fitting individual mode frequencies with a typical stellar model grid. We introduce a correlated noise model based on a Gaussian Process (GP) kernel to describe the systematics given that mode frequency systematics are expected to be highly correlated. We show that tuning the GP kernel can reproduce general features of frequency variations for changing model input physics and fundamental parameters. Fits with the correlated noise model better recover stellar parameters than traditional methods which either ignore the systematics or treat them as uncorrelated noise., Comment: 11 pages

In asteroseismology, the surface effect refers to a disparity between the observed and the modelled frequencies in stars with solar-like oscillations. It originates from improper modelling of the surface layers. Correcting the surface effect usually requires using functions with free parameters, which are conventionally fitted to the observed frequencies. On the basis that the correction should vary smoothly across the H--R diagram, we parameterize it as a simple function of surface gravity, effective temperature, and metallicity. We determine this function by fitting a wide range of stars. The absolute amount of the surface correction decreases with luminosity, but the ratio between it and $\nu_{\rm max}$ increases, suggesting the surface effect is more important for red giants than dwarfs. Applying the prescription can eliminate unrealistic surface correction, which improves parameter estimations with stellar modelling. Using two open clusters, we found a reduction of scatter in the model-derived ages for each star in the same cluster. As an important application, we provide a new revision for the $\Delta\nu$ scaling relation that, for the first time, accounts for the surface correction. The values of the correction factor, $f_{\Delta\nu}$, are up to 2\% smaller than those determined without the surface effect considered, suggesting decreases of up to 4\% in radii and up to 8\% in masses when using the asteroseismic scaling relations. This revision brings the asteroseismic properties into an agreement with those determined from eclipsing binaries. The new correction factor and the stellar models with the corrected frequencies are available at {https://www.github.com/parallelpro/surface}., Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures. Accepted by MNRAS

With recent advances in modelling stars using high-precision asteroseismology, the systematic effects associated with our assumptions of stellar helium abundance ($Y$) and the mixing-length theory parameter ($\alpha_\mathrm{MLT}$) are becoming more important. We apply a new method to improve the inference of stellar parameters for a sample of Kepler dwarfs and subgiants across a narrow mass range ($0.8 < M < 1.2\,\mathrm{M_\odot}$). In this method, we include a statistical treatment of $Y$ and the $\alpha_\mathrm{MLT}$. We develop a hierarchical Bayesian model to encode information about the distribution of $Y$ and $\alpha_\mathrm{MLT}$ in the population, fitting a linear helium enrichment law including an intrinsic spread around this relation and normal distribution in $\alpha_\mathrm{MLT}$. We test various levels of pooling parameters, with and without solar data as a calibrator. When including the Sun as a star, we find the gradient for the enrichment law, $\Delta Y / \Delta Z = 1.05^{+0.28}_{-0.25}$ and the mean $\alpha_\mathrm{MLT}$ in the population, $\mu_\alpha = 1.90^{+0.10}_{-0.09}$. While accounting for the uncertainty in $Y$ and $\alpha_\mathrm{MLT}$, we are still able to report statistical uncertainties of 2.5 per cent in mass, 1.2 per cent in radius, and 12 per cent in age. Our method can also be applied to larger samples which will lead to improved constraints on both the population level inference and the star-by-star fundamental parameters., Comment: 21 pages, 15 figures, 12 tables. Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Grid-based modelling is widely used for estimating stellar parameters. However, stellar model grid is sparse because of the computational cost. This paper demonstrates an application of a machine-learning algorithm using the Gaussian Process (GP) Regression that turns a sparse model grid onto a continuous function. We train GP models to map five fundamental inputs (mass, equivalent evolutionary phase, initial metallicity, initial helium fraction, and the mixing-length parameter) to observable outputs (effective temperature, surface gravity, radius, surface metallicity, and stellar age). We test the GP predictions for the five outputs using off-grid stellar models and find no obvious systematic offsets, indicating good accuracy in predictions.As a further validation, we apply these GP models to characterise 1,000 fake stars. Inferred masses and ages determined with GP models well recover true values within one standard deviation. An important consequence of using GP-based interpolation is that stellar ages are more precise than those estimated with the original sparse grid because of the full sampling of fundamental inputs., Accepted by MNRAS

The paper presents a correction to the scaling relations for red-giant stars using model-based masses and radii. We measure radial-mode frequencies from Kepler observations for 3,642 solar-like oscillators on the red-giant branch and use them to characterise the stars with the grid-based modeling. We determine fundamental stellar parameters with good precision: the typical uncertainty is 4.5% for mass, 16% for age, 0.006 dex for surface gravity, and 1.7% for radius. We also achieve good accuracy for estimated masses and radii, based on comparing with those determined for eclipsing binaries. We find a systematic offset of ~15% in mass and ~7% in radius between the modeling solutions and the scaling relations. Further investigation indicates that these offsets are mainly caused by a systematic bias in the Delta nu scaling relation: the original scaling relation underestimates Delta nu value by ~4%, on average, and it is important to correct for the surface term in the calibration. We find no significant offset in the nu_max scaling relation, although a clear metallicity dependence is seen and we suggest including a metallicity term in the formulae. Lastly, we calibrate new scaling relations for red-giant stars based on observed global seismic parameters, spectroscopic effective temperatures and metallicities, and modeling-inferred masses and radii., 20 Pages, accepted by ApJ

Hill, Michelle L., et al., Giant stars as known exoplanet hosts are relatively rare due to the potential challenges in acquiring precision radial velocities and the small predicted transit depths. However, these giant host stars are also some of the brightest in the sky and so enable high signal-to-noise ratio follow-up measurements. Here, we report on new observations of the bright (V ∼ 3.3) giant star ι Draconis (ι Dra), known to host a planet in a highly eccentric ∼511 day period orbit. TESS observations of the star over 137 days reveal asteroseismic signatures, allowing us to constrain the stellar radius, mass, and age to ∼2%, ∼6%, and ∼28%, respectively. We present the results of continued radial-velocity monitoring of the star using the Automated Planet Finder over several orbits of the planet. We provide more precise planet parameters of the known planet and, through the combination of our radial-velocity measurements with Hipparcos and Gaia astrometry, we discover an additional long-period companion with an orbital period of ∼ {68} {-36} {+60} yr. Mass predictions from our analysis place this substellar companion on the border of the planet and brown dwarf regimes. The bright nature of the star combined with the revised orbital architecture of the system provides an opportunity to study planetary orbital dynamics that evolve as the star moves into the giant phase of its evolution., T.L.C. acknowledges support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 792848 (PULSATION). T.L.C. is supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) in the form of a work contract (CEECIND/ 00476/2018). C.K. acknowledges support by Erciyes University Scientific Research Projects Coordination Unit under grant No. MAP-2020-9749. T.L. acknowledges the funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Unionʼs Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (CartographY GA. 804752). D.B. and M.S.C. acknowledge supported by FCT through the research grants UIDB/04434/2020, UIDP/04434/ 2020 and PTDC/FIS-AST/30389/2017, and by FEDER— Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional through COMPETE2020—Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (grant: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-030389). M.S.C. is supported by national funds through FCT in the form of a work contract. R.A.G. and S.N.B. acknowledge the support of the PLATO and GOLF CNES grants. S.M. acknowledges the support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation with the Ramon y Cajal fellowship number RYC-2015-17697 and with the grant No. PID2019-107187GB-I00. D.H. acknowledges support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NSSC19K0379), and the National Science Foundation (AST-1717000). D.L.B. acknowledges support from the NASA TESS GI Program under awards 80NSSC18K1585 and 80NSSC19K0385. T.R.B. acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council (DP210103119).

Asteroseismology is a promising tool to study Galactic structure and evolution because it can probe the ages of stars. Earlier attempts comparing seismic data from the {\it Kepler} satellite with predictions from Galaxy models found that the models predicted more low-mass stars compared to the observed distribution of masses. It was unclear if the mismatch was due to inaccuracies in the Galactic models, or the unknown aspects of the selection function of the stars. Using new data from the K2 mission, which has a well-defined selection function, we find that an old metal-poor thick disc, as used in previous Galactic models, is incompatible with the asteroseismic information. We show that spectroscopic measurements of [Fe/H] and [$\alpha$/Fe] elemental abundances from the GALAH survey indicate a mean metallicity of $\log (Z/Z_{\odot})=-0.16$ for the thick disc. Here $Z$ is the effective solar-scaled metallicity, which is a function of [Fe/H] and [$\alpha$/Fe]. With the revised disc metallicities, for the first time, the theoretically predicted distribution of seismic masses show excellent agreement with the observed distribution of masses. This provides an indirect verification of the asteroseismic mass scaling relation is good to within five percent. Using an importance-sampling framework that takes the selection function into account, we fit a population synthesis model of the Galaxy to the observed seismic and spectroscopic data. Assuming the asteroseismic scaling relations are correct, we estimate the mean age of the thick disc to be about 10 Gyr, in agreement with the traditional idea of an old $\alpha$-enhanced thick disc., Comment: 21 pages, submitted to MNRAS

We study the $\delta$ Scuti -- red giant binary KIC9773821, the first double-pulsator binary of its kind. It was observed by \textit{Kepler} during its four-year mission. Our aims are to ascertain whether the system is bound, rather than a chance alignment, and to identify the evolutionary state of the red giant via asteroseismology. An extension of these aims is to determine a dynamical mass and an age prior for a $\delta$ Sct star, which may permit mode identification via further asteroseismic modelling. We determine spectroscopic parameters and radial velocities (RVs) for the red giant component using HERMES@Mercator spectroscopy. Light arrival-time delays from the $\delta$ Sct pulsations are used with the red-giant RVs to determine that the system is bound and to infer its orbital parameters, including the binary mass ratio. We use asteroseismology to model the individual frequencies of the red giant to give a mass of $2.10^{+0.20}_{-0.10}$ M$_{\odot}$ and an age of $1.08^{+0.06}_{-0.24}$ Gyr. We find that it is a helium-burning secondary clump star, confirm that it follows the standard $\nu_{\rm max}$ scaling relation, and confirm its observed period spacings match their theoretical counterparts in the modelling code MESA. Our results also constrain the mass and age of the $\delta$ Sct star. We leverage these constraints to construct $\delta$ Sct models in a reduced parameter space and identify four of its five pulsation modes., Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS

Asteroseismology is an exceptional tool for studying stars by using the properties of observed modes of oscillation. So far the process of performing an asteroseismic analysis of a star has remained somewhat esoteric and inaccessible to non-experts. In this software paper we describe PBjam, an open-source Python package for analyzing the frequency spectra of solar-like oscillators in a simple but principled and automated way. The aim of PBjam is to provide a set of easy-to-use tools to extract information about the radial and quadrupole oscillations in stars that oscillate like the Sun, which may then be used to infer bulk properties such as stellar mass, radius and age or even structure. Asteroseismology and its data analysis methods are becoming increasingly important as space-based photometric observatories are producing a wealth of new data, allowing asteroseismology to be applied in a wide range of contexts such as exoplanet, stellar structure and evolution, and Galactic population studies., 12 Pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in AJ. Associated software available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4300079

Identifying the angular degrees $l$ of oscillation modes is essential for asteroseismology and depends on visual tagging before fitting power spectra in a so-called peakbagging analysis. In oscillating subgiants, radial ($l$= 0) mode frequencies distributed linearly in frequency, while non-radial ($l$ >= 1) modes are p-g mixed modes that having a complex distribution in frequency, which increased the difficulty of identifying $l$. In this study, we trained a 1D convolutional neural network to perform this task using smoothed oscillation spectra. By training simulation data and fine-tuning the pre-trained network, we achieved a 95 per cent accuracy on Kepler data., 9 pages, 10 figures, accepted by MNRAS

The change of sound speed has been found at the base of the convection during the solar cycles, which can be used to constrain the solar internal magnetic field. We aim to check whether the magnetic field generated by the solar dynamo can lead to the cyclic variation of the sound speed detected through helioseismology. The basic configuration of magnetic field in the solar interior was obtained by using a Babcock-Leighton (BL) type flux transport dynamo. We reconstructed one-dimensional solar models by assimilating magnetic field generated by an established dynamo and examined their influences on the structural variables. The results show that magnetic field generated by the dynamo is able to cause noticeable change of the sound speed profile at the base of the convective zone during a solar cycle. Detailed features of this theoretical prediction are also similar to those of the helioseismic results in solar cycle 23 by adjusting the free parameters of the dynamo model., accepted for publication in RAA (Res. Astron. Astrophys.)

Most previous efforts to calibrate how rotation and magnetic activity depend on stellar age and mass have relied on observations of clusters, where isochrones from stellar evolution models are used to determine the properties of the ensemble. Asteroseismology employs similar models to measure the properties of an individual star by matching its normal modes of oscillation, yielding the stellar age and mass with high precision. We use 27 days of photometry from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite to characterize solar-like oscillations in the G8 subgiant of the 94 Aqr triple system. the resulting stellar properties, when combined with a reanalysis of 35 yr of activity measurements from the Mount Wilson HK project, allow us to probe the evolution of rotation and magnetic activity in the system. the asteroseismic age of the subgiant agrees with a stellar isochrone fit, but the rotation period is much shorter than expected from standard models of angular momentum evolution. We conclude that weakened magnetic braking may be needed to reproduce the stellar properties, and that evolved subgiants in the hydrogen shell-burning phase can reinvigorate large-scale dynamo action and briefly sustain magnetic activity cycles before ascending the red giant branch., NSFNational Science Foundation (NSF) [AST-1812634]; NASANational Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) [NNX17AF27G, NNX16AB97G, 80NSSC20K0458, 80NSSC19K0374]; Visiting Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research; NASA through the TESS Guest Investigator Program [80NSSC18K1584, 80NSSC18K1585, 80NSSC19K0379]; NASA through the Living With A Star Program [NNX16AB76G]; TESS GI Program [80NSSC18K1585, 80NSSC19K0385]; UK Space Agency; Danish National Research FoundationDanmarks Grundforskningsfond [DNRF106]; NCAR Advanced Study Program Postdoctoral FellowshipNational Science Foundation (NSF)NSF - Directorate for Geosciences (GEO); National Science FoundationNational Science Foundation (NSF); CNES PLATO grant; German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt) under PLATO Data Center [50OO1501]; European Research Council (ERC)European Research Council (ERC) [715947]; Programme de Physique Stellaire et Planetaire; Australian Research CouncilAustralian Research Council; Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) [SEV-2015-0548-17-2, BES-2017-082610]; State Research Agency (AEI) of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU); European Social Fund via the Lithuanian Science Council (LMTLT)Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT) [09.3.3-LMT-K-712-01-0103]; ESA PRODEX program; Spanish Ministry with the Ramon y Cajal fellowship [RYC-2015-17697]; Scientific and Technological Research Council of TurkeyTurkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Arastirma Kurumu (TUBITAK) [TuBTAK:118F352], T.S.M. acknowledges support from NSF grant AST-1812634, NASA grants NNX16AB97G and 80NSSC20K0458, and a Visiting Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research. Computational time at the Texas Advanced Computing Center was provided through XSEDE allocation TG-AST090107. J.v.S. acknowledges support from NASA through the TESS Guest Investigator Program (80NSSC18K1584). S.B. acknowledges NASA grant 80NSSC19K0374. D.B. acknowledges support from NASA through the Living With A Star Program (NNX16AB76G) and from the TESS GI Program under awards 80NSSC18K1585 and 80NSSC19K0385. W.J.C., W.H.B. and M.B.N. acknowledge support from the UK Space Agency. Funding for the Stellar Astrophysics Centre is provided by the Danish National Research Foundation (grant agreement No.: DNRF106). R.E. was supported by the NCAR Advanced Study Program Postdoctoral Fellowship. the National Center for Atmospheric Research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. R.A.G. and B.M. acknowledge support from the CNES PLATO grant. P.G. acknowledges funding from the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt) under PLATO Data Center grant 50OO1501. D.H. acknowledges support from NASA through the TESS Guest Investigator Program (80NSSC18K1585, 80NSSC19K0379). T.R. acknowledges support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 715947). T.A. acknowledges support from the Programme de Physique Stellaire et Planetaire. T.R.B. acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council. L.G.C. acknowledges support from grant FPI-SO from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) (research project SEV-2015-0548-17-2 and predoctoral contract BES-2017-082610). A.J. Acknowledges support from the State Research Agency (AEI) of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU). H.K. acknowledges support from the European Social Fund via the Lithuanian Science Council (LMTLT) grant No. 09.3.3-LMT-K-712-01-0103. M.N.L. acknowledges support from the ESA PRODEX program. S.M. acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry with the Ramon y Cajal fellowship number RYC-2015-17697. Z.C.O., S.o. and M.Y. acknowledge support from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TuBTAK:118F352). A.R.G.S. acknowledges support from NASA grant NNX17AF27G. This work benefited from discussions within the international team "The Solar and Stellar Wind Connection: Heating processes and angular momentum loss" at the International Space Science Institute (ISSI).

Detailed modelling of stellar oscillations is able to give precise estimates for stellar ages, but the inferred results typically depend on the adopted model parameters used for the age inference. High-quality asteroseismic data with precise measurements of mixed modes are available for 36 Kepler subgiants. To obtain a handle on the robustness of the ages for these stars, we first study the dependencies of seismic ages on three model input parameters. We find that inferred ages do not change systematically with the helium fraction (Y) or the mixing-length parameter but depend strongly on the metallicity ([M/H]) of the model. The results indicate that age estimates of subgiants have less model dependence and hence are more reliable than those of main-sequence stars or red giants. We then model individual oscillation frequencies of the same 36 Kepler subgiants, using observed metallicities, and obtain their ages with an average precision of ~15%. The comparison with previous age estimates with different stellar codes or input physics shows good agreement (mostly within 2#). We hence suggest that seismology-determined ages of subgiants are not greatly model-dependent., MNRAS Accepted

The presence of mixed modes makes subgiants excellent targets for asteroseismology, providing a probe for the internal structure of stars. Here we study 36 \emph{Kepler} subgiants with solar-like oscillations and report their oscillation mode parameters. We performed a so-called peakbagging exercise, i.e. estimating oscillation mode frequencies, linewidths, and amplitudes with a power spectrum model, fitted in the Bayesian framework and sampled with a Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm. The uncertainties of the mode frequencies have a median value of 0.180 $\mu$Hz. We obtained seismic parameters from the peakbagging, analysed their correlation with stellar parameters, and examined against scaling relations. The behaviour of seismic parameters (e.g. $\Delta\nu$, $\nu_{\rm max}$, $\epsilon_p$) is in general consistent with theoretical predictions. We presented the observational p--g diagrams: $\gamma_1$--$\Delta\nu$ for early subgiants and $\Delta\Pi_1$--$\Delta\nu$ for late subgiants, and demonstrate their capability to estimate stellar mass. We also found a $\log g$ dependence on the linewidths and a mass dependence on the oscillation amplitudes and the widths of oscillation excess. This sample will be valuable constraints for modelling stars and studying mode physics such as excitation and damping., Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS

Precise stellar ages of stars are necessary to study the evolution of the Milky Way. The age determination is significantly affected by C and O abundances of stars due to their contribution to the overall metallicity and opacity. On the basis of C and O abundances derived from high-resolution observations, we determine the ages of 148 FGK-type dwarfs in the solar neighborhood by considering C and O enhancements individually. Our results show that using C and O enhancements individually could affect the age determination of the high-α population, especially for stars with [O/α] > 0.2 dex, making them about 1 Gyr younger compared to the results using traditional α-enhanced models. This results in a steeper slope in the age-[α/Fe] relation for the high-α population (changes from 0.0339 ± 0.0075 to 0.0436 ± 0.0086), indicating a higher formation rate. We find no tight relation between age and [α/Fe] or [O/Fe] in the high-α populations. The distribution of space velocity for young α-rich stars shows that they are more likely characterized to the low-α populations.

Asteroseismology is a powerful tool for probing the internal structures of stars by using their natural pulsation frequencies. It relies on identifying sequences of pulsation modes that can be compared with theoretical models, which has been done successfully for many classes of pulsators, including low-mass solar-type stars, red giants, high-mass stars and white dwarfs. However, a large group of pulsating stars of intermediate mass--the so-called delta Scuti stars--have rich pulsation spectra for which systematic mode identification has not hitherto been possible. This arises because only a seemingly random subset of possible modes are excited, and because rapid rotation tends to spoil the regular patterns. Here we report the detection of remarkably regular sequences of high-frequency pulsation modes in 60 intermediate-mass main-sequence stars, allowing definitive mode identification. Some of these stars have space motions that indicate they are members of known associations of young stars, and modelling of their pulsation spectra confirms that these stars are indeed young., published in Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2226-8

We model the oscillations of the SONG target $\mu$ Herculis to estimate the parameters of the star. The $\ell$ = 1 mixed modes of $\mu$ Her provide strong constraints on stellar properties. The mass and age given by our asteroseismic modelling are 1.10$^{+0.11}_{-0.06}$ M$_{\odot}$ and 7.55$^{+0.96}_{-0.79}$ Gyr. The initial helium abundance is also constrained at around $Y_{\rm{init}}$ = 0.28, suggesting a ratio in the elements enrichment law ($\Delta Y/\Delta Z$) around 1.3, which is closed to the solar value. The mixing-length parameter converges to about 1.7, which is $\sim$ 10\% lower than the solar value and consistent with the results from hydrodynamic simulations. Our estimates of stellar mass and age agree very well with the previous modelling results with different input physics. Adding asteroseismic information makes these determinations less model-dependent than is typically the case when only surface information is available. Our studies of the model dependence (mass, initial helium and metallicity fractions, and the mixing length parameter) of the age determination indicate that accurate stellar ages ($\lesssim$ 10\%) can be expected from asteroseismic modelling for stars similar to $\mu$ Her. The $\ell$ = 1 bumped modes, which are sensitive to the mean density of the helium core, provide a useful 'clock' that provides additional constraints on its age., Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures

We analysed solar-like oscillations in 1523 $\textit{Kepler}$ red giants which have previously been misclassified as subgiants, with predicted $\nu_{\rm max}$ values (based on the Kepler Input Catalogue) between 280$\mu$Hz to 700$\mu$Hz. We report the discovery of 626 new oscillating red giants in our sample, in addition to 897 oscillators that were previously characterized by Hekker et al. (2011) from one quarter of $\textit{Kepler}$ data. Our sample increases the known number of oscillating low-luminosity red giants by $26\%$ (up to $\sim$ 1900 stars). About three quarters of our sample are classified as ascending red-giant-branch stars, while the remainder are red-clump stars. A novel scheme was applied to determine $\Delta \nu$ for 108 stars with $\nu_{\rm max}$ close to the Nyquist frequency (240$\mu$Hz < $\nu_{\rm max}$ < 320$\mu$Hz). Additionally, we identified 47 stars oscillating in the super-Nyquist frequency regime, up to 387$\mu$Hz, using long-cadence light curves. We show that the misclassifications are most likely due to large uncertainties in KIC surface gravities, and do not result from the absence of broadband colors or from different physical properties such as reddening, spatial distribution, mass or metallicity. The sample will be valuable to study oscillations in low-luminosity red giants and to characterize planet candidates around those stars.

Monitoring chromospheric and photospheric indexes of magnetic activity can provide valuable information, especially the interaction between different parts of the atmosphere and their response to magnetic fields. We extract chromospheric indexes, S and Rhk+, for 59,816 stars from LAMOST spectra in the LAMOST-Kepler program, and photospheric index, Reff, for 5575 stars from Kepler light curves. The log Reff shows positive correlation with log Rhk+. We estimate the power-law indexes between Reff and Rhk+ for F-, G-, and K-type stars, respectively. We also confirm the dependence of both chromospheric and photospheric activity on stellar rotation. Ca II H and K emissions and photospheric variations generally decrease with increasing rotation periods for stars with rotation periods exceeding a few days. The power-law indexes in exponential decay regimes show different characteristics in the two activity-rotation relations. The updated largest sample including the activity proxies and reported rotation periods provides more information to understand the magnetic activity for cool stars., Comment: 8 pages,7 figures

Stellar models rely on a number of free parameters. High-quality observations of eclipsing binary stars observed by Kepler offer a great opportunity to calibrate model parameters for evolved stars. Our study focuses on six Kepler red giants with the goal of calibrating the mixing-length parameter of convection as well as the asteroseismic surface term in models. We introduce a new method to improve the identification of oscillation modes that exploits theoretical frequencies to guide the mode identification ('peak-bagging') stage of the data analysis. Our results indicate that the convective mixing-length parameter (alpha) is approximate to 14 per cent larger for red giants than for the Sun, in agreement with recent results from modelling the APOGEE stars. We found that the asteroseismic surface term (i.e. the frequency offset between the observed and predicted modes) correlates with stellar parameters (T-eff, log g) and the mixing-length parameter. This frequency offset generally decreases as giants evolve. The two coefficients a(-1) and a(3) for the inverse and cubic terms that have been used to describe the surface term correction are found to correlate linearly. The effect of the surface term is also seen in the p-g mixed modes; however, established methods for correcting the effect are not able to properly correct the g-dominated modes in late evolved stars.

The oscillations of the solar-like star HD 49933 have been observed thoroughly by CoRot. Two dozens of frequency shifts, which are closely related with the change in magnetic activity, have been measured. To explore the effects of the magnetic activity on the frequency shifts, we calculate frequency shifts for the radial and $l = 1$ p-modes of HD 49933 with the general variational method, which evaluates the shifts using a spatial integral of the product of a kernel and some sources. The theoretical frequency shifts well reproduce the observation. The magnitudes and positions of the sources are determined according to the $\chi^2$ criterion. We predict the source that contributes to both $l = 0$ and $l = 1$ modes is located at $0.48 - 0.62$Mm below the stellar surface. In addition, based on the assumption that $A_{0}$ is proportional to the change in the MgII activity index $\Delta{i}_{MgII}$, we obtained that the change of MgII index between minimum and maximum of HD 49933 cycle period is about 0.665. The magnitude of the frequency shifts compared to the Sun already told us that HD 49933 is much more active than the Sun, which is further confirmed in this paper. Furthermore, our calculation on the frequency shifts of $l = 1$ modes indicates the variation of turbulent velocity in the stellar convective zone may be an important source for the $l = 1$ shifts., Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, article

Oxygen and carbon are important elements in stellar populations. Their behavior refers to the formation history of the stellar populations. C and O abundances would also obviously influence stellar opacities and the overall metal abundance $Z$. With observed high-quality spectroscopic properties, we construct stellar models with C and O elements, to give more accurate ages for 70 metal-poor dwarfs, which have been determined to be high-$\alpha$ halo, low-$\alpha$ halo and thick-disk stars. Our results show that high-$\alpha$ halo stars are relatively older than low-$\alpha$ halo stars by around 2.0 Gyr. The thick-disk population has an age range between the two halo populations. The age distribution profiles indicate that high-$\alpha$ halo and low-$\alpha$ halo stars match the in situ accretion simulation by Zolotov et al., and the thick-disk stars might be formed in a relatively quiescent and long-lasting process. We also note that stellar ages are very sensitive to O abundance, since the ages clearly increase with increasing [O/Fe] values. Additionally, we obtain several stars with peculiar ages, including 2 young thick-disk stars and 12 stars older than the universe age., Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures, ApJ accepted

Main sequence turn-off (MSTO) stars have advantages as indicators of Galactic evolution since their ages could be robustly estimated from atmospheric parameters. Hundreds of thousands of MSTO stars have been selected from the LAMOST Galactic sur- vey to study the evolution of the Galaxy, and it is vital to derive accurate stellar parameters. In this work, we select 150 MSTO star candidates from the MSTO stars sample of Xiang that have asteroseismic parameters and determine accurate stellar parameters for these stars combing the asteroseismic parameters deduced from the Kepler photometry and atmospheric parameters deduced from the LAMOST spectra.With this sample, we examine the age deter- mination as well as the contamination rate of the MSTO stars sample. A comparison of age between this work and Xiang shows a mean difference of 0.53 Gyr (7%) and a dispersion of 2.71 Gyr (28%). The results show that 79 of the candidates are MSTO stars, while the others are contaminations from either main sequence or sub-giant stars. The contamination rate for the oldest stars is much higher than that for the younger stars. The main cause for the high contamination rate is found to be the relatively large systematic bias in the LAMOST surface gravity estimates., Comment: accepted by RAA

We calculated the populations of core-helium-burning (CHeB) stars and found that the secondary red clump (SRC) stars can form an SRC peak in the distributions of the frequency of maximum seismic amplitude ($\nu_{max}$) and mean large-frequency separation ($\Delta\nu$) of CHeB stars when metallicity $Z \geq$ 0.02. The $\nu_{max}$ and $\Delta\nu$ of CHeB stars are dependent not only on He core mass but on H-shell burning. The SRC peak is composed of the CHeB stars with mass roughly between the critical mass M_{Hef} and M_{Hef}+0.2 while He core mass is between about 0.33 and 0.36 M_{sun}. The location of the SRC peak can be affected by the mixing-length parameter $\alpha$, metallicity $Z$, and overshooting parameter $\delta_{ov}$. A decrease in $\alpha$ or increase in $Z$ or $\delta_{ov}$ leads to a movement of the SRC peak towards a lower frequency. However, the change in $Z$ and $\alpha$ only slightly affects the value of M_{Hef} but the variation in $\delta_{ov}$ can significantly affects the value of M_{Hef}. Thus the SRC peak might aid in determining the value of M_{Hef} and calibrating $\delta_{ov}$. In addition, the effects of convective acceleration of SRC stars and the $\nu_{max}$ of `semi-degenerate' stars decreasing with mass result in the appearance of a shoulder between about 40 and 50 $\mu$hz in the \dnu{} distribution. However, the convective acceleration of stars with M M_{Hef} is obviously larger than that for the populations with $M

High precision and long-lasting \emph{Kepler} data enabled us to estimate stellar properties with asteroseismology as an accurate tool. We performed asteroseismic analysis on six solar-like stars observed by the \emph{Kepler} mission: KIC 6064910, KIC 6766513, KIC 7107778, KIC 10079226, KIC 10147635 and KIC 12069127. The extraction of seismic information includes two parts. First, we obtained two global asteroseismic parameters, mean large separation $\Delta\nu$ and frequency of maximum power $\nu_{\rm{max}}$, with autocorrelation function and collapsed autocorrelation function. Second, we extracted individual oscillation modes $\nu_{nl}$ with low-$l$ degree using a least-squares fit. Stellar grid models were built with Yale Rotating Stellar Evolution Code (YREC) to analyze stellar properties. They covered the range of $M=0.8\sim1.8$ $M_{\odot}$ with a step of 0.02 $M_{\odot}$ and $\rm{[Fe/H]}=-0.3\sim0.4$ $\rm{dex}$ with a step of 0.1 $\rm{dex}$. We used a Bayesian approach to estimate stellar fundamental parameters of the six stars, under the constraints of asteroseismic parameters ($\Delta\nu$, $\nu_{\rm{max}}$) and non-asteroseismic parameters ($T_{\rm{eff}}$, $\rm{[Fe/H]}$). We discover that the six targets include five sub-giant stars with $1.2\sim1.5$ $M_{\odot}$ and one main-sequence star with $1.08M_{\odot}$, and with ages in the range of $3\sim5$ $\rm{Gyr}$., Comment: Language improved

The aim of this paper is to determinate the fundamental parameters of six exoplanet host (EH) stars and their planets. While techniques for detecting exoplanets yield properties of the planet only as a function of the properties of the host star, hence, we must accurately determine parameters of EH stars at first. For this reason, we constructed a grid of stellar models including diffusion and rotation-induced extra-mixing with given ranges of input parameters (i.e. mass, metallicity, and initial rotation rate). In addition to the commonly used observational constraints such as the effective temperature T_{eff}, luminosity L and metallicity [Fe/H], we added two observational constraints, the lithium abundance log N (Li) and the rotational period P_{rot}. These two additional observed parameters can make further constrains on the model due to their correlations with mass, age and other stellar properties. Hence, our estimations of fundamental parameters for these EH stars and their planets are with higher precision than previous works. Therefore, the combination of rotational period and lithium help us to obtain more accurate parameters for stars, leading to an improvement of the knowledge of the physical state about the EH stars and their planets., Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, 5 tables

The frequency ratios and of HD 49933 exhibit an increase at high frequencies. This behavior also exists in the ratios of other stars, which is considered to result from the low signal-to-noise ratio and the larger line width at the high-frequency end and could not be predicted by stellar models in previous work. Our calculations show that the behavior not only can be reproduced by stellar models, but can be predicted by asymptotic formulas of the ratios. The frequency ratios of the Sun, too, can be reproduced well by the asymptotic formulas. The increased behavior derives from the fact that the gradient of mean molecular weight at the bottom of the radiative region hinders the propagation of p-modes, while the hindrance does not exist in the convective core. This behavior should exist in the ratios of stars with a large convective core. The characteristic of the ratios at high frequencies provides a strict constraint on stellar models and aids in determining the size of the convective core and the extent of overshooting. Observational constraints point to a star with $M=1.28\pm0.01 M_{\odot}$, $R=1.458\pm0.005 R_{\odot}$, $t=1.83\pm0.1$ Gyr, $r_{cc}=0.16\pm0.02 R_{\odot}$, $\alpha=1.85\pm0.05$, and $\delta_{ov}=0.6\pm0.2$ for HD 49933., Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. Any comments are welcome and please send to yangwuming@bnu.edu.cn