# Towards a systematic treatment of observational uncertainties in forward asteroseismic modelling of gravity-mode pulsators

**Authors:** Dominic M. Bowman, Mathias Michielsen  
**arXiv:** [2109.10776](https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.10776)  
**Date:** 2021-09-22  
**Summary page:** https://www.summarizepaper.com/en/paper/2109.10776v1/

## Key points

- Asteroseismology uses pulsation mode frequencies to determine a star's interior physics by comparing them with theoretical predictions.
- Recent advances in numerical, theoretical, and statistical asteroseismic methods have renewed interest in investigating the propagation of observational uncertainties within a forward asteroseismic modelling framework.
- The authors use a well-studied benchmark slowly pulsating B star, KIC 7760680, to investigate the sensitivity of forward asteroseismic modelling to various sources of observational uncertainty that affect the precision of input pulsation mode frequencies.
- One of the largest sources of uncertainty in their benchmark star is in manually building period spacing patterns.
- The inclusion of a potentially ambiguous pulsation mode frequency may yield differences in model parameters up to 10% for mass and age depending on the radial order of the mode.
- Future asteroseismic studies should quantify and include observational uncertainties introduced by light curve extraction, iterative pre-whitening, and building period spacing patterns as these propagate into final modelling results.
- This study emphasizes how important it is to consider all possible sources of error when conducting asteroseismic studies.

## Summary

This article focuses on the impact of observational uncertainties on forward asteroseismic modelling of gravity-mode pulsators. Asteroseismology uses pulsation mode frequencies to determine a star's interior physics by comparing them with theoretical predictions. Recent advances in numerical, theoretical, and statistical asteroseismic methods have renewed interest in investigating the propagation of observational uncertainties within a forward asteroseismic modelling framework. The authors use a well-studied benchmark slowly pulsating B star, KIC 7760680, to investigate the sensitivity of forward asteroseismic modelling to various sources of observational uncertainty that affect the precision of input pulsation mode frequencies. They aim to quantify the impact of various choices made throughout the observational aspects of extracting pulsation mode frequencies in main sequence stars with gravity modes. The study finds that one of the largest sources of uncertainty in their benchmark star is in manually building period spacing patterns. The inclusion of a potentially ambiguous pulsation mode frequency may yield differences in model parameters up to 10% for mass and age depending on the radial order of the mode. The authors conclude that future asteroseismic studies should quantify and include observational uncertainties introduced by light curve extraction, iterative pre-whitening, and building period spacing patterns as these propagate into final modelling results. The study highlights the importance of considering all possible sources of uncertainty when interpreting asteroseismic data. In addition to discussing their findings related to KIC 7760680, this article also provides detailed information about their methodology and results for constructing variant patterns and testing different scenarios. The authors present graphs and tables showing parameter probability distributions for each pattern tested. Overall, this study emphasizes how important it is to consider all possible sources of error when conducting asteroseismic studies. By quantifying these errors and including them in models, researchers can improve our understanding of stellar interiors while also increasing confidence in our results.