arXiv subjects

Fernando Pérez Hernández

Publications and source records attributed to Fernando Pérez Hernández.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Hidden worlds: A non-transiting candidate planet in the Neptunian desert around the solar-type pulsator KIC 9139163

Close-in substellar companions experience strong tidal and magnetic interactions with their host stars and are therefore subject to fast orbital evolution. The solar-type pulsator KIC 9139163 exhibits in its light curve a stable 0.6-day modulation for which the best explanation is the presence of a close-in non-transiting companion that we therefore attempt to characterise. We combine Kepler and TESS photometric data with spectroscopic observations obtained with HARPS-N. The analysis of the radial velocities obtained with HARPS-N provides a companion mass $M_p \sin i = 7.3 \pm 1.4 \, \mathrm{M}_{\oplus}$. We infer a planetary radius of $2.43 \pm 0.14 \, \mathrm{R}_\oplus$, which, combined with the measured mass and retrieved inclination, implies a bulk density consistent with a hot water-rich world. This places the non-transiting companion candidate of KIC 9139163 within the Neptunian desert, a regime where planets are expected either to have lost their primordial hydrogen/helium envelopes or to harbour metal-enriched atmospheres. We further detect significant variations in amplitude between the Kepler and TESS phase curves, obtained six years apart, as well as a secular increase in amplitude over the Kepler baseline. Our fit favours a model with two distinct longitudinal cloud offsets over a single-offset scenario. Both datasets indicate a moderate-to-high geometric albedo and low-to-moderate heat redistribution. The opposite phase offsets observed in the Kepler and TESS datasets suggest a time-variable longitudinal brightness distribution. While making KIC 9139163 an interesting candidate for future ground follow-ups, it also suggests that searching for other non-transiting planets around fast stellar rotators in space-borne photometric surveys might provide new insights into the physics of the Neptunian planets located in the desert. [shortened]

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2023

In search of gravity mode signatures in main sequence solar-type stars observed by Kepler

Gravity modes (g modes), mixed gravito-acoustic modes (mixed modes), and gravito-inertial modes (gi modes) possess unmatched properties as probes for stars with radiative interiors. The structural and dynamical constraints that they are able to provide cannot be accessed by other means. While they provide precious insights into the internal dynamics of evolved stars as well as massive and intermediate-mass stars, their non-detection in main sequence (MS) solar-type stars make them a crucial missing piece in our understanding of angular momentum transport in radiative zones and stellar rotational evolution. In this work, we aim to apply certain analysis tools originally developed for helioseismology in order to look for g-mode signatures in MS solar-type stars. We select a sample of the 34 most promising MS solar-type stars with Kepler four-year long photometric time series. All these stars are well-characterised late F-type stars with thin convective envelopes, fast convective flows, and stochastically excited acoustic modes (p modes). For each star, we compute the background noise level of the Fourier power spectrum to identify significant peaks at low frequency. After successfully detecting individual peaks in 12 targets, we further analyse four of them and observe distinct patterns of surrounding peaks with a low probability of being noise artifacts. Comparisons with the predictions from reference models suggest that these patterns are compatible with the presence of non-asymptotic low-order pure g modes, pure p modes, and mixed modes. Given their sensitivity to both the convective core interface stratification and the coupling between p- and g-mode resonant cavities, such modes are able to provide strong constraints on the structure and evolutionary states of the related targets. [abridged]

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2017

Internal rotation of 13 low-mass low-luminosity red giants in the Kepler field

The Kepler space telescope has provided time series of red giants of such unprecedented quality that a detailed asteroseismic analysis becomes possible. For a limited set of about a dozen red giants, the observed oscillation frequencies obtained by peak-bagging together with the most recent pulsation codes allowed us to reliably determine the core/envelope rotation ratio. The results so far show that the current models are unable to reproduce the rotation ratios, predicting higher values than what is observed and thus indicating that an efficient angular momentum transport mechanism should be at work. Here we provide an asteroseismic analysis of a sample of 13 low-luminosity low-mass red giant stars observed by Kepler during its first nominal mission. These targets form a subsample of the 19 red giants studied previously Corsaro et al. 2015, which not only have a large number of extracted oscillation frequencies, but also unambiguous mode identifications We aim to extend the sample of red giants for which internal rotation ratios obtained by theoretical modeling of peak-bagged frequencies are available. We also derive the rotation ratios using different methods, and compare the results of these methods with each other. We built seismic models using a grid search combined with a Nelder-Mead simplex algorithm and obtained rotation averages employing Bayesian inference and inversion methods. We compared these averages with those obtained using a previously developed model-independent method. We find that the cores of the red giants in this sample are rotating 5 to 10 times faster than their envelopes, which is consistent with earlier results. The rotation rates computed from the different methods show good agreement for some targets, while some discrepancies exist for others.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2011

Angular momentum transfer between oscillations and rotation in subdwarf B hybrid pulsators

Context. Subdwarf B pulsators exhibit pressure (p) and/or gravity (g) modes. Their frequency spectra range from very simple, with few frequencies, to very rich, with more than fifty peaks in some cases. Balloon09 is a hybrid pulsating subdwarf B, showing a large number of p- and g-modes including a triplet and a quintuplet-like structures which are interpreted as p-mode frequency splittings due to stellar rotation. Photometric observations undertaken in two subsequent years revealed a change in these rotational splittings of 0.24 - 0.58 μHz/yr. Aims. We analyse the possibility of angular momentum interchange between stellar rotation and internal gravity waves as a mechanism for the observed rotational splitting variations. Methods. The expected change in the rotational splitting of eigenmodes resulting from this mechanism are computed in the nonadiabatic linear approximation for a stellar structure model that is representative of the target star. The fact that g-modes are also observed in Balloon09 makes it a particularly suitable candidate for our study, because the change in the rotational splittings are proportional to the amplitude squared of the g-modes which, in this case, can be estimated from the observations. Results. We find that this mechanism is able to predict changes in the splittings that can be of the same order of magnitude as the observed variations.

astro-ph.SR↗