Automated asteroseismic peak detections

Abstract

Space observatories such as $\textit{Kepler}$ have provided data that can potentially revolutionise our understanding of stars. Through detailed asteroseismic analyses we are capable of determining fundamental stellar parameters and reveal the stellar internal structure with unprecedented accuracy. However, such detailed analyses, known as peak bagging, have so far been obtained for only a small percentage of the observed stars while most of the scientific potential of the available data remains unexplored. One of the major challenges in peak bagging is identifying how many solar-like oscillation modes are visible in a power density spectrum. Identification of oscillation modes is usually done by visual inspection which is time-consuming and has a degree of subjectivity. Here, we present a peak detection algorithm specially suited for the detection of solar-like oscillations. It reliably characterises the solar-like oscillations in a power density spectrum and estimates their parameters without human intervention. Furthermore, we provide a metric to characterise the false positive and false negative rates to provide further information about the reliability of a detected oscillation mode or the significance of a lack of detected oscillation modes. The algorithm presented here opens the possibility for detailed and automated peak bagging of the thousands of solar-like oscillators observed by $\textit{Kepler}$.