Asteroseismic Adventures around Azimuthal Asymmetry

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Abstract
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Avoided crossings are an ubiquitous physical phenomenon in the dynamics of few-body systems. I illustrate how they emerge in asteroseismology --- the analysis and interpretation of normal modes in stars --- and specifically in variable stars possessing stochastically-excited oscillations. I describe a one-to-one correspondence between these standing waves and hybridised molecular orbitals. Operational predictions for the frequencies, lifetimes, and visibilities of normal modes emerge from this correspondence, and are now increasingly exploited to yield observational discoveries of stellar rotation, magnetism, and star-planet interactions. In particular I report recent uses of it to discover a new class of variable stars: those with insides and outsides that rotate around different axes. I will conclude by sketching how similar principles can be used to measure masses of the central black holes in the Little Red Dots recently discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope.

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About the Speaker
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Joel Ong is an ARC DECRA Research Fellow at the University of Sydney. Prior to this, he was a NASA Hubble Fellow at the University of Hawaii --- the first Singaporean to have been awarded a Hubble Fellowship. Dr. Ong received his PhD in 2022 from Yale University, and his undergraduate education at the National University of Singapore (class of 2016).