Asteroseismology and Galactic Archaeology

Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam – AIP, An der Sternwarte 16, 14482 Potsdam, Germany

Abstract

Galactic Archeology is a coined term to describe the fact that the Milky Way's history is encoded both in the amounts of various chemical elements seen in the spectra of stellar atmospheres (abundances), and in stellar motions. One of the pillars of Galactic Archaeology is the use of stellar abundance ratios as an indirect age estimator, which although imprecise, has been proved useful in providing relative ages between the different galactic components. The lack of more precise age determination for large samples of field stars is one of the main reasons why different scenarios for the formation of our Galaxy can still be accommodated to current observational constraints, thus preventing a clear picture of the Milky Way's assembling history. Another difficulty is that most of the available information (especially on ages) has been confined to a region close to the Sun. These two main obstacles can now start to be overcome thanks to a) large spectroscopic and photometric surveys covering larger portions of the Milky Way, and b) the combination of the photometric and spectroscopic information with that coming from asteroseismology. The latter promises a breakthrough in the field of Galactic Archaeology, as it brings the opportunity to, for the first time, measure ages for large samples of distant field giant stars, which cover a large age-baseline. When combining this information with that soon available from Gaia, the field of Galactic Archaeology will be shaken and modelers will certainly have less flexibility in finding models that comply to these precious new observational constraints. The goal of these short lectures is to put Asteroseismology in the context of Galactic Archaeology.