Cool Stars 21: Mixed Mode Asteroseismology of Red Giant Stars Through the Luminosity Bump

Most current models of low mass red giant stars do not reproduce the observed position of the red giant branch luminosity bump, a diagnostic of the maximum extent of the convective envelope during the first dredge up. Global asteroseismic parameters, the large frequency separation and frequency of maximum oscillation power, measured for large samples of red giants, show that modeling convective overshoot below the convective envelope helps match the modeled luminosity bump positions to observations. However, these global parameters cannot be used to probe envelope overshoot in a star-by-star manner. Red giant mixed modes, which behave like acoustic modes at the surface and like gravity modes in the core, contain important information about the interior structure of the star, especially near the convective boundary. Therefore, these modes may be used to probe interior processes, such as overshoot. Using a grid of red giant models with varying mass, metallicity, surface gravity, overshoot treatment, and amount of envelope overshoot, we find that changing the overshoot amplitude (and prescription) of overshoot below the convection zone in red giant stellar models results in significant differences in the evolution of the models' dipole mixed-mode oscillation frequencies, the average mixed mode period spacing, and gravity mode phase offset term. Using these small differences in gravity mode phase evolution, we find that it is most likely not be possible to discriminate between prescriptions for overshoot when looking at real data without using robust prior estimates of a stellar system's metallicity and mixing length. This prior knowledge can, however, be obtained by studying clusters with Kepler data.