2015MNRAS.451.3011C

Large-scale analyses of stellar samples comprised of cool, solar-like oscillators now commonly utilize the so-called asteroseismic scaling relations to estimate fundamental stellar properties. In this paper, we present a test of the scaling relation for the global asteroseismic parameter νmax, the frequency at which a solar-like oscillator presents its strongest observed pulsation amplitude. The classic relation assumes that this characteristic frequency scales with a particular combination of surface gravity and effective temperature that also describes the dependence of the cut-off frequency for acoustic waves in an isothermal atmosphere, i.e. ν_max ∝gT_eff^-1/2. We test how well the oscillations of cool main-sequence and subgiant stars adhere to this relation, using a sample of asteroseismic targets observed by the NASA Kepler Mission. Our results, which come from a grid-based analysis, rule out departures from the classic gT_eff^-1/2 scaling dependence at the level of ≃ 1.5 percent over the full ≃ 1560K range in Teff that we tested. There is some uncertainty over the absolute calibration of the scaling. However, any variation with Teff is evidently small, with limits similar to those above.