On the seismic age of the Sun

TL;DR

This paper estimates the Sun's main-sequence age using low-degree acoustic modes from BiSON data, achieving a precise value by calibrating deviations from a standard solar model.

Contribution

It introduces a method to determine the Sun's age by linearizing frequency deviations, providing a new precise estimate with associated heavy-element abundance.

Findings

Estimated solar age: 4.68 Gyr with 0.02 Gyr uncertainty

Determined initial heavy-element abundance: 0.0169

Method achieves high precision in seismic age estimation

Abstract

We use low-degree acoustic modes obtained by the BiSON to estimate the main-sequence age $t_\odot$ of the Sun. The calibration is accomplished by linearizing the deviations from a standard solar model the seismic frequencies of which are close to those of the Sun. Formally, we obtain the preliminary value $t_\odot=4.68\pm0.02 $Gy, coupled with an initial heavy-element abundance $Z=0.0169\pm0.0005$. The quoted standard errors, which are not independent, are upper bounds implied under the assumption that the standard errors in the observed frequencies are independent.