Impact of asteroseismology on improving stellar ages determination

High precision photometry as performed by the CoRoT and Kepler satellites on-board instruments has allowed to detect stellar oscillations over the whole HR diagram. Oscillation frequencies are closely related to stellar interior properties via the density and sound speed profiles, themselves tightly linked with the mass and evolutionary state of stars. Seismic diagnostics performed on stellar internal structure models allow to infer the age and mass of oscillating stars. The accuracy and precision of the age determination depend both on the goodness of the observational parameters (seismic and classical) and on our ability to model a given star properly. They therefore suffer from any misunderstanding of the physical processes at work inside stars (as microscopic physics, transport processes...). In this paper, we recall some seismic diagnostics of stellar age and we illustrate their efficiency in age-dating the CoRoT target HD 52265.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, to be published in the proceedings of the conference "New advances in stellar physics: from microscopic to macroscopic processes" held at Roscoff, France. EAS Publications Series, 63 (2013) 123-13

Ages of Exoplanet Host-Stars from Asteroseismology : HD 17156, a Case Study

The characterization of the growing number of newly discovered exoplanets ---nature, internal structure, formation and evolution--- strongly relies on the properties of their host-star, i.e. its mass, radius and age. These latter can be inferred from stellar evolution models constrained by the observed global parameters of the host-star --- effective temperature, photospheric chemical composition, surface gravity and/or luminosity--- and by its mean density inferred from the transit analysis. Additional constraints for the models can be provided by asteroseismic observations of the host-star. The precision and accuracy on the age, mass and radius not only depend on the quality and number of available observations of the host-star but also on our ability to model it properly. Stellar models are still based on a number of approximations, they rely on physical inputs and data that can be uncertain and do not treat correctly all the physical processes that can be at work inside a star. We focus here on the determination of the age of HD 17156, an oscillating star hosting an exoplanet. We examine the dispersion of the age values obtained by different methods ---empirical or model-dependent--- and the different sources of errors ---observational or theoretical--- that intervene in the age determination based on stellar models.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, to appear in the ASP proceedings of "The 61st Fujihara seminar: Progress in solar/stellar physics with helio- and asteroseismology", 13th-17th March 2011, Hakone, Japan. Ed: Hiromoto Shibahash

Reference grids of stellar models and oscillation frequencies: Data from the CESAM stellar evolution code and ADIPLS oscillation programme

We present grids of stellar models and their associated oscillation frequencies that have been used by the CoRoT Seismology Working Group during the scientific preparation of the CoRoT mission. The stellar models have been calculated with the CESAM stellar internal structure and evolution code while the oscillation frequencies have been obtained from the CESAM models by means of the ADIPLS adiabatic oscillation programme. The grids cover a range of masses, chemical compositions and evolutionary stages corresponding to those of the CoRoT primary targets. The stellar models and oscillation frequencies are available on line through the Evolution and Seismic Tools Activity (ESTA) web site.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures accepted for publication in ApSS (CoRoT/ESTA special volume

Implementation of a Wake-up Radio Cross-Layer Protocol in OMNeT++ / MiXiM

This paper presents the DoRa protocol, which is a new cross-layer protocol for handling the double radio of nodes in wake-up radio scenario. The implementation details in OMNET++/MiXiM are also given, with a focus on the implemented MAC layers. The main goal of the DoRa protocol is to reduce energy consumption in wireless sensor network, by taking full advantage of the passive wake-up scheme. The performance of the DoRa protocol is then evaluated and results are compared with B-MAC and IEEE 802.15.4 protocols.Comment: Published in: A. F\"orster, C. Minkenberg, G. R. Herrera, M. Kirsche (Eds.), Proc. of the 2nd OMNeT++ Community Summit, IBM Research - Zurich, Switzerland, September 3-4, 2015, arXiv:1509.03284, 201

Asteroseismology for "\`{a} la carte" stellar age-dating and weighing: Age and mass of the CoRoT exoplanet host HD 52265

In the context of CoRoT, Kepler, Gaia, TESS, and PLATO, precise and accurate stellar ages, masses and radii are of paramount importance. They are crucial to constrain scenarii of planetary formation and evolution.We aim at quantifying how detailed stellar modeling improves the accuracy and precision on age and mass of individual stars. We adopt a multifaceted approach where we examine how the number of observational constraints as well as the uncertainties on observations and on model input physics impact the age-dating and weighing. We modelled the exoplanet host-star HD52265, a MS, solar-like oscillator observed by CoRoT. We considered different sets of observational constraints (HR data, metallicity, seismic constraints). For each case, we determined the age, mass, and properties of HD52265 inferred from models, and quantified the impact of the models inputs. Our seismic analysis provides an age A=2.10-2.54 Gyr, a mass M=1.14-1.32 Msun, and a radius R=1.30-1.34 Rsun, which corresponds to uncertainties of 10, 7, and 1.5% respectively. Our seismic study provides constraints on surface convection, through the mixing-length found to be 12-15% smaller than the solar one. Because of helium-mass degeneracy, the initial He abundance is determined modulo the mass. The seismic mass of the exoplanet is found to be Mp sin i=1.17-1.26 MJup, much more precise than what can be derived by HR diagram inversion. We demonstrate that asteroseismology allows to improve the age accuracy compared to other methods. We emphasize that the knowledge of the mean properties of oscillations -as the large frequency separation- is not enough for deriving accurate ages. We need precise individual frequencies to narrow the age scatter due to model uncertainties. This strengthen the case for precise classical stellar parameters and frequencies as will be obtained by Gaia and PLATO.Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures, Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics Corrected by the language editor, Table link to CD

Comparisons for Esta-Task3: Cles and Cesam

We present the results of comparing three different implementations of the microscopic diffusion process in the stellar evolution codes CESAM and CLES. For each of these implementations we computed models of 1.0, 1.2 and 1.3 M$_{\odot}$. We analyse the differences in their internal structure at three selected evolutionary stages, as well as the variations of helium abundance and depth of the stellar convective envelope. The origin of these differences and their effects on the seismic properties of the models are also considered.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, Joint HELAS and CoRoT/ESTA Workshop on Solar/Stellar Models and Seismic Analysis Tools, Novembre, Porto 2007 To be published in EAS Publications Serie

Effects of copper, zinc and selenium status on performance and health in commercial dairy and beef herds: retrospective study

A retrospective study using analysis of plasma copper and zinc, and erythrocyte glutathione peroxidase from 2 080 dairy and beef cow herds was conducted to evaluate the relationship between trace-element status and production, reproduction and health in cows and their calves. Classification of the herd status as deficient, marginal, low-adequate or high-adequate was based on the lower tercile of individual values. Odds ratios for each disorder in herds were calculated by multivariable stepwise logistic regression. Inadequate copper status was not associated with adult disorders, but was an important risk factor for poor calf performance or health. Selenium deficient status was associated with most studied disorders in cows, and both deficient and marginal herd status were strongly associated with poor health of calves, particularly with increased risks of myopathy and infectious diseases. Zinc insufficiency was strongly associated with low milk production and impaired locomotion in dairy herds, and was also associated with diarrhoea and poor growth in calves. Because a low-adequate status increased the risk of many disorders in adults and calves, we propose to classify herds as deficient and marginal when the lower terciles of plasma zinc concentration are below 12 and between 12 and 14 lmol/l respectively

Social Choice with Analytic Preferences

A social welfare function is a mapping from a set of profiles of individual preference orderings to the set of social orderings of a universal set of alternatives. A social choice correspondence specifies a nonempty subset of the agenda for each admissible preference profile and each admissible agenda. We provide examples of economic and political preference domains for which the Arrow social welfare function axioms are inconsistent, but whose choice-theoretic counterparts (with nondictatorship strengthened to anonymity) yield a social choice correspondence possibility theorem when combined with a natural agenda domain. In both examples, agendas are compact subsets of the nonnegative orthant of a multidimensional Euclidean space. In our first possibility theorem, we consider the standard Euclidean spatial model used in many political models. An agenda can be interpreted as being the feasible vectors of public goods given the resource constraints faced by a legislature. Preferences are restricted to be Euclidean spatial preferences. Our second possibility theorem is for economic domains. Alternatives are interpreted as being vectors of public goods. Preferences are monotone and representable by an analytic utility function with no critical points. Convexity of preferences can also be assumed. Many of the utility functions used in economic models, such as Cobb-Douglas and CES, are analytic. Further, the set of monotone, convex, and analytic preference orderings is dense in the set of continuous, monotone, convex preference orderings. Thus, our preference domain is a large subset of the classical domain of economic preferences. An agenda can be interpreted as the set of feasible allocations given an initial resource endowment and the firms' production technologies. To establish this theorem, an ordinal version of the Analytic Continuation Principle is developed.

Stellar convective cores as dark matter probes

The recent detection of a convective core in a main-sequence solar-type star is used here to test particular models of dark matter (DM) particles, those with masses and scattering cross sections in the range of interest for the DM interpretation of the positive results in several DM direct detection experiments. If DM particles do not effectively self-annihilate after accumulating inside low-mass stars (e.g. in the asymmetric DM scenario) their conduction provides an efficient mechanism of energy transport in the stellar core. For main-sequence stars with masses between 1.1 and 1.3 Msun, this mechanism may lead to the suppression of the inner convective region expected to be present in standard stellar evolution theory. The asteroseismic analysis of the acoustic oscillations of a star can prove the presence/absence of such a convective core, as it was demonstrated for the first time with the Kepler field main-sequence solar-like pulsator, KIC 2009505. Studying this star we found that the asymmetric DM interpretation of the results in the CoGeNT experiment is incompatible with the confirmed presence of a small convective core in KIC 2009505.Comment: to appear on Physical Review