Star Formation Timescales of the Halo Populations from Asteroseismology and Chemical Abundances

Understand

We combine asteroseismology, optical high-resolution spectroscopy, and kinematic analysis for 26 halo red giant branch stars in the \textit{Kepler} field in the range of $-2.5<[\mathrm{{Fe}/{H}}]<-0.6$.

• After applying theoretically motivated corrections to the seismic scaling relations, we obtain an average mass of $0.97\pm 0.03\,\mathrm{M_{\odot}}$ for our sample of halo stars.
• Although this maps into an age of $\sim 7\,\mathrm{Gyr}$, significantly younger than independent age estimates of the Milky Way stellar halo, we considerer this apparently young age is due to the overestimation of stellar mass in the scaling relations.
• There is no significant mass dispersion among lower red giant branch stars ($\log g>2$), which constrains a relative age dispersion to $<18\%$, corresponding to $<2\,\mathrm{Gyr}$.