A seismic scaling relation for stellar age II: The red giant branch

TL;DR

This paper develops and tests new seismic scaling relations to estimate the ages of red giant stars accurately, providing a computationally efficient alternative to traditional grid-based modeling for galactic archaeology.

Contribution

It introduces the first seismic scaling relations for red giant star ages, calibrated with over 1,000 stars, achieving accuracy comparable to grid-based methods.

Findings

High-quality scaling relations with ~15% uncertainty

New scaling mass and radius relations for red giants

Validated relations using a large stellar sample

Abstract

Owing to their simplicity and ease of application, seismic scaling relations are widely used to determine the properties of stars exhibiting solar-like oscillations, such as solar twins and red giants. So far, no seismic scaling relations for determining the ages of red giant stars have been developed. Such relations would be desirable for galactic archaeology, which uses stellar ages to map the history of the Milky Way. The ages of red giants must instead be estimated with reference to grids of theoretical stellar models, which can be computationally intensive. Here I present an exhaustive search for scaling age relations involving different combinations of observable quantities. The candidate scaling relations are calibrated and tested using more than 1,000 red giant stars whose ages were obtained via grid-based modeling. I report multiple high-quality scaling relations for red giant branch stars, the best of which are shown to be approximately as accurate as grid-based modeling with typical uncertainties of 15%. Additionally, I present new scaling mass and radius relations for red giants as well.