Title:

   The Future of Stellar Seismology




Travis Metcalfe
NSF Fellow
High Altitude Observatory, NCAR





Abstract:

In the past decade, helioseismology has revolutionized our understanding
of the interior structure of the Sun. In the next decade, asteroseismology
will place this knowledge into context, by providing structural data on
pulsating stars all across the H-R diagram. Several current and planned
satellite missions will soon unleash a flood of stellar pulsation data.
Deriving reliable seismological constraints from these observations will
require a significant improvement in our analysis methods. I have
developed a computational method based on a parallel genetic algorithm to
fit pulsation models to the observed oscillation frequencies in white
dwarf stars. This has led to a number of interesting tests of fundamental
physics, including a key astrophysical nuclear reaction rate and the
theory of stellar crystallization. The impact of this method on our
analysis of pulsating white dwarfs suggests that seismological modeling
of other types of stars could also benefit from this approach.