An asteroseismic age estimate for the Pleiades using a neural-network emulator of rotating δ Scuti pulsation models
Abstract
Asteroseismology of δ Sct stars has strong potential for determining the ages of young stars through individual mode fitting. We present a neural-network emulator trained on approximately 46 million rotating pulsation models. From stellar mass, metallicity, age, and equatorial rotation velocity, it predicts 12 classical observables, two asteroseismic scalars, and the p mode, f mode and low-order g mode frequencies for degrees ℓ=0-3, including the individual m components of rotationally split multiplets. We couple the emulator to nested sampling through a multivariate likelihood that propagates correlated emulator residuals, making full Bayesian posterior exploration practical. Applied to five δ Sct stars in the Pleiades observed by TESS, the framework gives mutually consistent individual asteroseismic ages of 107-117 Myr. Combining their age posteriors gives a cluster age of 113.3±4.5 Myr (statistical), consistent with the 112 ± 5 Myr lithium-depletion-boundary age and the 110-160 Myr range from rotating-isochrone fitting. Together with spectroscopic vsin i, the inferred equatorial velocities also provide post-fit inclination estimates. Separate perturbed-grid tests using 100 matched synthetic pairs per input-physics variation give median absolute age shifts of $2.1$, $2.3$, and $5.2$ Myr for |Δfov|=0.005, |ΔαMLT|=0.1, and |ΔY|=0.02, respectively; the corresponding 90th percentile shifts are $6.5$, $7.6$, and $16.2$ Myr. These tests describe conditional population sensitivities, not a systematic uncertainty on the Pleiades age. Together, the cluster-age agreement and the scale of these input-physics sensitivities support δ Sct asteroseismology as a complementary age estimation method for young stars.
Related
- TESS flares and chromospheric variability in the Pleiades, the Hyades, and Praesepe
- Asteroseismic properties of young pulsators in the Perseus molecular cloud. Discovery of period-spacing patterns in HD 281229
- Asteroseismic analysis of the merger product red giant in the γ Persei system
- 21cmEMUv3: A hybrid diffusion and long short-term memory emulator of 21cmFAST summary observables
- Relation of rotation and pulsation properties in γ Doradus stars
BibTeX
@misc{gautam2026asteroseismic,
title = {{An asteroseismic age estimate for the Pleiades using a neural-network emulator of rotating $δ$ Scuti pulsation models}},
author = {Anuj Gautam and Simon J. Murphy},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.15939},
eprint = {2610.15939},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.15939},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - An asteroseismic age estimate for the Pleiades using a neural-network emulator of rotating δ Scuti pulsation models
AU - Anuj Gautam
AU - Simon J. Murphy
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/11
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.15939
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.15939
AB - Asteroseismology of δ Sct stars has strong potential for determining the ages of young stars through individual mode fitting. We present a neural-network emulator trained on approximately 46 million rotating pulsation models. From stellar mass, metallicity, age, and equatorial rotation velocity, it predicts 12 classical observables, two asteroseismic scalars, and the p mode, f mode and low-order g mode frequencies for degrees ℓ=0-3, including the individual m components of rotationally split multiplets. We couple the emulator to nested sampling through a multivariate likelihood that propagates correlated emulator residuals, making full Bayesian posterior exploration practical. Applied to five δ Sct stars in the Pleiades observed by TESS, the framework gives mutually consistent individual asteroseismic ages of 107-117 Myr. Combining their age posteriors gives a cluster age of 113.3±4.5 Myr (statistical), consistent with the 112 ± 5 Myr lithium-depletion-boundary age and the 110-160 Myr range from rotating-isochrone fitting. Together with spectroscopic vsin i, the inferred equatorial velocities also provide post-fit inclination estimates. Separate perturbed-grid tests using 100 matched synthetic pairs per input-physics variation give median absolute age shifts of $2.1$, $2.3$, and $5.2$ Myr for |Δf_ov|=0.005, |Δα_MLT|=0.1, and |ΔY|=0.02, respectively; the corresponding 90th percentile shifts are $6.5$, $7.6$, and $16.2$ Myr. These tests describe conditional population sensitivities, not a systematic uncertainty on the Pleiades age. Together, the cluster-age agreement and the scale of these input-physics sensitivities support δ Sct asteroseismology as a complementary age estimation method for young stars.
ER -