Seismological Investigations of Compact Stars

Abstract

Since Landolt’s discovery of the first ZZ Ceti star, the ranks of the compact pulsators have swollen to include planetary nebula nuclei, hot pre-white dwarf stars, hot and cool white dwarf stars, and possibly even neutron stars. The discovery of multi-periodic variations in these objects has helped to usher in a new era of rapid progress in the field of stellar seismology. For the compact stars this rapid progress is the result of a combination of four fortunate circumstances: their physical structure is relatively simple; typical amplitudes are small enough to be both readily observable and amenable to linear analysis; the wealth of observed periods in each object provides many independent clues to the underlying structure of the compact stars; and the periods are short enough that we can observe many cycles in a night, thereby completely resolving the period structure in many of these stars.