Red Horizontal Branch stars: an asteroseismic perspective

TL;DR

This paper investigates red horizontal branch stars using asteroseismology, identifying peculiar low-mass stars with signs of mass loss and analyzing their pulsation spectra to understand their structure and formation.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed asteroseismic analysis of low-mass, mass-stripped red giant stars, revealing their unique structural and pulsation characteristics.

Findings

Identified stars with apparent ages exceeding the Universe's age, indicating mass loss.

Found high coupling between pressure and gravity modes as a signature of stripped stars.

Highlighted challenges in measuring large frequency separation in short datasets.

Abstract

Robust age estimates of red giant stars are now possible thanks to the precise inference of their mass based on asteroseismic constraints. However, there are cases where such age estimates can be highly precise yet very inaccurate. An example is giants that have undergone mass loss or mass transfer events that have significantly altered their mass. In this context, stars with "apparent" ages significantly higher than the age of the Universe are candidates as stripped stars, or stars that have lost more mass than expected, most likely via interaction with a companion star, or because of the poorly understood mass-loss mechanism along the red-giant branch. In this work we identify examples of such objects among red giants observed by $\textit{Kepler}$, both at low ([Fe/H] $ \lesssim -0.5$) and solar metallicity. By modelling their structure and pulsation spectra, we find a consistent picture confirming that these are indeed low-mass objects consisting of a He core of $\approx 0.5 \, M_\odot$ and an envelope of $\approx 0.1 - 0.2 \, M_\odot$. Moreover, we find that these stars are characterised by a rather extreme coupling ($q \gtrsim 0.4$) between the pressure-mode and gravity-mode cavities, i.e. much higher than the typical value for red clump stars, providing thus a direct seismic signature of their peculiar structure. The complex pulsation spectra of these objects, if observed with sufficient frequency resolution, hold detailed information about the structural properties of likely products of mass stripping, hence can potentially shed light on their formation mechanism. On the other hand, our tests highlight the difficulties associated with measuring reliably the large frequency separation, especially in shorter datasets, with impact on the reliability of the inferred masses and ages of low-mass Red Clump stars with e.g. K2 or TESS data.