What asteroseismology can do for exoplanets

TL;DR

Asteroseismology offers valuable methods for characterizing exoplanet host stars, measuring stellar inclinations, and determining orbital eccentricities, enhancing exoplanet studies through detailed stellar analysis, exemplified by the Kepler-410 system.

Contribution

This paper demonstrates three novel applications of asteroseismology in exoplanet research, including stellar characterization, inclination measurement, and eccentricity estimation, using the Kepler-410 system as an example.

Findings

Asteroseismology enables detailed characterization of host stars.

Stellar inclinations can be measured using asteroseismic data.

Orbital eccentricities can be inferred from transit durations.

Abstract

We describe three useful applications of asteroseismology in the context of exoplanet science: (1) the detailed characterisation of exoplanet host stars; (2) the measurement of stellar inclinations; and (3) the determination of orbital eccentricity from transit duration making use of asteroseismic stellar densities. We do so using the example system Kepler-410 (Van Eylen et al. 2014). This is one of the brightest (V = 9.4) Kepler exoplanet host stars, containing a small (2.8 Rearth) transiting planet in a long orbit (17.8 days), and one or more additional non-transiting planets as indicated by transit timing variations. The validation of Kepler-410 (KOI-42) was complicated due to the presence of a companion star, and the planetary nature of the system was confirmed after analyzing a Spitzer transit observation as well as ground-based follow-up observations.