Testing Asteroseismic Scaling Relations with Interferometry

¹ Institut für Astrophysik, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
² Stellar Astrophysics Centre, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 120, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
³ Department of Astronomy, Yale University, 260 Whitney Ave, New Haven, CT 06520, USA
⁴ Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale, Université Paris XI - CNRS (UMR8617), Batiment 121, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France
⁵ NASA Ames Research Centre, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA
⁶ SETI Institute, 189 Bernardo Avenue, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA
⁷ Sydney Institute for Astronomy (SIfA), School of Physics, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
⁸ Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), Konigstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
⁹ School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK
¹⁰ Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, Justus-von-Liebig-Weg 3, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
¹¹ Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 1, 85741 Garching bei München, Germany

^a e-mail: twhite@astro.physik.uni-goettingen.de

Published online: 23 September 2015

Abstract

The asteroseismic scaling relations for the frequency of maximum oscillation power, v_max, and the large frequency separation, Δν, provide an easy way to directly determine the masses and radii of stars with detected solar-like oscillations. With the vast amount of data available from the CoRoT and Kepler missions, the convenience of the scaling relations has resulted in their wide-spread use. But how valid are the scaling relations when applied to red giants, which have a substantially different structure than the Sun? Verifying the scaling relations empirically requires independent measurements. We report on the current state and future prospects of interferometric tests of the scaling relations.