Abstract. The Kepler mission has been fantastic for asteroseismology of solar-type stars, but the targets are typically quite distant. As a consequence, the reliability of asteroseismic modeling has been limited by the precision of additional constraints from highresolution spectroscopy and parallax measurements. A precise luminosity is particularly useful to minimize potential biases due to the intrinsic correlation between stellar mass and initial helium abundance. We have applied the latest version of the Asteroseismic Modeling Portal (AMP) to the complete Kepler data sets for 30 stars with known rotation rates and chromospheric activity levels. We compare the stellar properties derived with and without the measured parallaxes from the first data release of Gaia. We find that in most cases the masses and ages inferred from asteroseismology shift within their uncertainties. For a few targets that show larger shifts, the updated stellar properties only strengthen previous conclusions about anomalous rotation in middle-aged stars.
MotivationThe correlation between stellar mass and initial helium abundance is a long-standing problem in modeling solar-type stars. Increasing either the mass or the initial helium yields a model with a higher luminosity, so we can trade off one parameter for the other while still satisfying the observational constraints ([1]). Asteroseismic observations can reduce the severity of this problem by providing a strong constraint on the stellar radius, but the issue cannot be avoided entirely without a more direct constraint on the stellar luminosity. Without such a constraint, the correlation can lead to systematic biases in the stellar properties inferred from asteroseismology. In this paper, we examine the impact of including luminosity constraints derived from Gaia DR1 parallaxes ([2]) for a sample of 30 Kepler targets with known rotation rates ([3]) and chromospheric activity levels ([4]). Our goal is to evaluate the possibility of systematic biases in the asteroseismic masses and ages for stars with anomalous rotation compared to empirical gyrochronology relations ([5]), with implications for a new theory of magnetic evolution beyond middle age ([6]).Until recently, it was presumed that rotation and magnetism decay together throughout the lives of solar-type stars ([7, 8]). Although stars are formed with a range of initial rotation rates, the stellar winds entrained in their magnetic fields lead to angular momentum loss from magnetic braking. This forces convergence to a single rotation rate at a given mass after roughly 500 Myr. The Kepler mission allowed the measurement of rotation periods in old field stars whose masses and ages could be determined from asteroseismology. These new data revealed a population of field stars rotating