Asteroseismology across the HR diagram

Donald Kurtz

Published 2022-01-27Version 1

Asteroseismology has grown from its beginnings three decades ago to a mature field teeming with discoveries and applications. This phenomenal growth has been enabled by space photometry with precision $10-100$ times better than ground-based observations, with nearly continuous light curves for durations of weeks to years, and by large scale ground-based surveys spanning years designed to detect all time-variable phenomena. The new high precision data are full of surprises, deepening our understanding of the physics of stars. $\bullet$ This review explores asteroseismic developments from the last decade primarily as a result of light curves from the Kepler and TESS space missions for: massive upper main-sequence OBAF stars, pre-main-sequence stars, peculiar stars, classical pulsators, white dwarfs and subdwarfs, and tidally interacting close binaries. $\bullet$ The space missions have increased the numbers of pulsators in many classes by an order of magnitude. $\bullet$ Asteroseismology measures fundamental stellar parameters and stellar interior physics - mass, radius, age, metallicity, luminosity, distance, magnetic fields, interior rotation, angular momentum transfer, convective overshoot, core burning stage - supporting disparate fields such as galactic archeology, exoplanet host stars, supernovae progenitors, gamma ray and gravitational wave precursors, close binary star origins and evolution, and standard candles. $\bullet$ Stars are the luminous tracers of the universe. Asteroseismology significantly improves models of stellar structure and evolution on which all inference from stars depends.