A study of binary constraints for seismology of delta Scuti stars

Abstract

Seismology of single delta Scuti stars has mainly been inhibited by failing to detect many of the theoretically predicted pulsation modes, resulting in difficulties with mode identification. Theoretical and observational advances have, however, helped to overcome this problem, but the following questions then remain: do we know enough about the star to either use the (few) identified mode(s) to probe the structure of the star? or improve the determination of the stellar parameters? It is now generally accepted that for the observed frequencies to be used successfully as seismic probes for these objects, we need to concentrate on stars where we can constrain the number of free parameters in the problem, such as in binary systems or open clusters. The work presented here, investigates how much is gained in our understanding of the star, by comparing the information we obtain from a single star with that of an eclipsing binary system. Singular Value Decomposition is the technique used to explore the precision we expect in terms of stellar parameters (such as mass, age and chemical composition).