Future Doppler Ground-Based Search for Solar-Like Oscillations with HARPS

Abstract

Observations of solar-like oscillation frequencies allow us to constrain the theory of structure and evolution of stars with an outer convective zone. Recent improvements in radial velocity measurements have led to p-mode detection on Procyon (Martic et al., 1999) and β Hydri (Bedding et al., 2001; Carrier et al., 2001a). Very recently, characterization of the p-modes of α Cen A has been made with the spectrograph CORALIE mounted on the 1.2-m Swiss telescope at the ESO La Silla Observatory (Bouchy & Carrier, 2001, Carrier et al., these proceedings). The power of the radial velocity technique promises the development of ground-based search for solar-like oscillations on a large sample of stars especially with the future spectrograph HARPS.