The Complementary Roles of Interferometry and Asteroseismology in Determining the Mass of Solar‐Type Stars

How important is an independent diameter measurement for the determination ofstellar parameters of solar-type stars? When coupled with seismic observables,how well can we determine the stellar mass? If we can determine the radius ofthe star to between 1% and 4%, how does this affect the theoreticaluncertainties? Interferometry can provide an independent radius determinationand it has been suggested that we should expect at least a 4% precision on sucha measurement for nearby solar-type stars. This study aims to provide bothqualitative and quantitive answers to these questions for a star such as ourSun, where seismic information will be available. We show that the importanceof an independent radius measurement depends on the combination of observablesavailable and the size of the measurement errors. It is important fordetermining all stellar parameters and in particular the mass, where a goodradius measurement can even allow us to determine the mass with a precisionbetter than 2%. Our results also show that measuring the small frequencyseparation significantly improves the determination of the evolutionary stageand the mixing-length parameter.Comment: 7 pages text; 6 pages ref+figures+tables; accepted by ApJ; uses emulateapj