The GAPS Programme with HARPS-N at TNG. VII. Putting exoplanets in the stellar context: magnetic activity and asteroseismology of $\tau$ Bootis A

TL;DR

This study used high-cadence spectroscopic observations of $ au$ Bootis A to analyze stellar activity, asteroseismology, and star-planet interactions, refining stellar and planetary parameters and detecting solar-like oscillations.

Contribution

It introduces a new observational strategy combining asteroseismology and magnetic activity studies, with a custom data analysis software, to better understand star-planet systems.

Findings

Refined planetary ephemeris and detected stellar binary companion acceleration.

Identified high-latitude plage activity on $ au$ Boo.

Detected solar-like oscillations consistent with theoretical models.

Abstract

Aims. We observed the $\tau$ Boo system with the HARPS-N spectrograph to test a new observational strategy aimed at jointly studying asteroseismology, the planetary orbit, and star-planet magnetic interaction. Methods. We collected high-cadence observations on 11 nearly consecutive nights and for each night averaged the raw FITS files using a dedicated software. In this way we obtained spectra with a high signal-to-noise ratio, used to study the variation of the CaII H&K lines and to have radial velocity values free from stellar oscillations, without losing the oscillations information. We developed a dedicated software to build a new custom mask that we used to refine the radial velocity determination with the HARPS-N pipeline and perform the spectroscopic analysis. Results. We updated the planetary ephemeris and showed the acceleration caused by the stellar binary companion. Our results on the stellar activity variation suggest the presence of a high-latitude plage during the time span of our observations. The correlation between the chromospheric activity and the planetary orbital phase remains unclear. Solar-like oscillations are detected in the radial velocity time series: we estimated asteroseismic quantities and found that they agree well with theoretical predictions. Our stellar model yields an age of $0.9\pm0.5$ Gyr for $\tau$ Boo and further constrains the value of the stellar mass to $1.38\pm0.05$ M$_\odot$.