Tracing early stellar evolution with asteroseismology: pre-main sequence stars in NGC 2264

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that asteroseismology can effectively probe the internal structures of pre-main sequence stars, revealing their evolutionary stages before hydrogen core burning, based on pulsation properties of delta Scuti stars in NGC 2264.

Contribution

It introduces a method to use asteroseismology for studying early stellar evolution stages, extending its application to pre-main sequence stars.

Findings

Detected a relation between pulsation properties and pre-MS evolutionary phase.

Asteroseismology can be applied to stars before hydrogen core burning.

Demonstrated the method on 34 pre-MS delta Scuti stars in NGC 2264.

Abstract

Asteroseismology has been proven to be a successful tool to unravel details of the internal structure for different types of stars in various stages of their main sequence and post-main sequence evolution. Recently, we found a relation between the detected pulsation properties in a sample of 34 pre-main sequence (pre-MS) delta Scuti stars and the relative phase in their pre-MS evolution. With this we are able to demonstrate that asteroseismology is similarly powerful if applied to stars in the earliest stages of evolution before the onset of hydrogen core burning.