Testing the asteroseismic estimates of stellar radii with surface brightness-colour relations and Gaia DR3 parallaxes. Red giants and red clump stars

Abstract

We compared stellar radii derived from asteroseismic scaling relations with those estimated using two independent surface brightness-colour relations (SBCRs) combined with Gaia DR3 parallaxes. We cross-matched asteroseismic and astrometric data for over 6,400 red giant branch (RGB) and red clump (RC) stars from the APO-K2 catalogue with the TESS Input Catalogue v8.2 to obtain precise $V$ band magnitudes and $E(B-V)$ colour excesses. We then adopted two different SBCRs from the literature to derive stellar radius estimates, denoted as $R^a$ and $R^b$, respectively. We analysed the ratio of these SBCR-derived radii to the asteroseismic radius estimates, $R,$ provided in the APO-K2 catalogue. Both SBCRs exhibited good agreement with asteroseismic radius estimates. On average, $R^a$ was overestimated by 1.2<!PCT!> with respect to $R$, while $R^b$ was underestimated by 2.5<!PCT!>. For stars larger than 20 $R_ sun $, SBCR radii are systematically lower than asteroseismic ones. The dispersion in the radius ratio was similar for the two methods (around 10<!PCT!>). The agreement with asteroseismic radii shows a strong dependence on the parallax. The dispersion is halved for stars with a parallax greater than 2.5 mas. In this subsample, $R^b$ showed perfect agreement with $R$, while $R^a$ remained slightly overestimated, by 3<!PCT!>. A trend with Fe/H was found at a level of 4<!PCT!> to 6<!PCT!> per dex. Additionally, a clear trend with asteroseismic mass is found. For stars less massive than about 0.95 $M_ sun $, SBCR radii were significantly higher than asteroseismic ones, by about 6<!PCT!>. This overestimation correlated with the presence of extended helium cores in these stars' structures relative to their envelopes. Furthermore, radius ratios showed a dichotomous behaviour at higher masses, mainly due to the presence of several RC stars with SBCR radii significantly lower with respect to asteroseismology. This behaviour originates from a different response of asteroseismic scaling relations and SBCR to alpha /Fe abundance ratios for massive stars, both in RGB and RC phases, which is reported here for the first time.