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Online seminar of the Working Group on Active B Stars (WGABS)
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Speaker: Jan Henneco (Newcastle University, UK) Date: 2026 April 17th at 10:00 ET Title: The peculiar asteroseismic signals of massive binary interaction products and what we can learn from them Abstract: The immense observational and theoretical efforts of the last decades have led to the precise and unambiguous characterisation of the interiors of O- and B-type (massive) stars via their pulsations. On the flip side, these asteroseismic studies have uncovered the holes in our current understanding of how stars evolve, for example, how angular momentum is transported and how chemical species are mixed. The relatively recent realisation that binarity is not a rarity but rather the standard for massive stars and that around 70% of them exchange mass with their companions further complicates efforts to analyse their asteroseismic signals correctly. In this talk, we will explore recent attempts to predict the internal structure, evolution, and seismic properties of massive binary interaction products such as mass donors, mass gainers, and mergers. We will see if and how asteroseismology can be used to identify them in stellar populations. The latter can be extremely useful for excluding interaction products and obtaining effectively single populations on the one hand, or specifically targeting these products to learn more about their binary precursors on the other hand. Finally, we will see what remains to be done to elevate these binary-seismology concepts to practical applications, especially in anticipation of upcoming space missions such as PLATO. |
