Paper detail

A 20-Second Cadence View of Solar-Type Stars and Their Planets with TESS: Asteroseismology of Solar Analogs and a Re-characterization of pi Men c

We present an analysis of the first 20-second cadence light curves obtained by the TESS space telescope during its extended mission. We find a precision improvement of 20-second data compared to 2-minute data for bright stars when binned to the same cadence (~10-25% better for T<~8 mag, reaching equal precision at T~13 mag), consistent with pre-flight expectations based on differences in cosmic ray mitigation algorithms. We present two results enabled by this improvement. First, we use 20-second data to detect oscillations in three solar analogs (gamma Pav, zeta Tuc and pi Men) and use asteroseismology to measure their radii, masses, densities and ages to ~1%, ~3%, ~1% and ~20% respectively, including systematic errors. Combining our asteroseismic ages with chromospheric activity measurements we find evidence that the spread in the activity-age relation is linked to stellar mass and thus convection-zone depth. Second, we combine 20-second data and published radial velocities to re-characterize pi Men c, which is now the closest transiting exoplanet for which detailed asteroseismology of the host star is possible. We show that pi Men c is located at the upper edge of the planet radius valley for its orbital period, confirming that it has likely retained a volatile atmosphere and that the "asteroseismic radius valley" remains devoid of planets. Our analysis favors a low eccentricity for pi Men c (<0.1 at 68% confidence), suggesting efficient tidal dissipation (Q/k <~ 2400) if it formed via high-eccentricity migration. Combined, these early results demonstrate the strong potential of TESS 20-second cadence data for stellar astrophysics and exoplanet science.