Super-Nyquist asteroseismology of solar-like oscillators with Kepler and K2 - expanding the asteroseismic cohort at the base of the red-giant branch

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that long-cadence Kepler and K2 data can be used to detect solar-like oscillations in stars above the traditional Nyquist frequency, expanding the asteroseismic study to more evolved stars.

Contribution

It introduces a method to analyze super-Nyquist oscillations in long-cadence data, significantly increasing the number of stars available for asteroseismic research.

Findings

Archival Kepler data can detect oscillations up to ~500 μHz.

K2 data may detect oscillations between 400-450 μHz.

Approximately 400 targets are available in Kepler archive for this analysis.

Abstract

We consider the prospects for detecting solar-like oscillations in the "super-Nyquist" regime of long-cadence (LC) Kepler photometry, i.e., above the associated Nyquist frequency of approximately 283 {\mu}Hz. Targets of interest are cool, evolved subgiants and stars lying at the base of the red-giant branch. These stars would ordinarily be studied using the short-cadence (SC) data, since the associated SC Nyquist frequency lies well above the frequencies of the detectable oscillations. However, the number of available SC target slots is quite limited. This imposes a severe restriction on the size of the ensemble available for SC asteroseismic study.We find that archival Kepler LC data from the nominal Mission may be utilized for asteroseismic studies of targets whose dominant oscillation frequencies lie as high as approximately 500 {\mu}Hz, i.e., about 1.75- times the LC Nyquist frequency. The frequency detection threshold for the shorter-duration science campaigns of the re-purposed Kepler Mission, K2, is lower. The maximum threshold will probably lie somewhere between approximately 400 and 450 {\mu}Hz. The potential to exploit the archival Kepler and K2 LC data in this manner opens the door to increasing significantly the number of subgiant and low-luminosity red-giant targets amenable to asteroseismic analysis, overcoming target limitations imposed by the small number of SC slots.We estimate that around 400 such targets are now available for study in the Kepler LC archive. That number could potentially be a lot higher for K2, since there will be a new target list for each of its campaigns.