On the impact of the structural surface effect on global stellar properties and asteroseismic analyses

In a series of papers, we have recently demonstrated that it is possible to construct stellar structure models that robustly mimic the stratification of multidimensional radiative magnetohydrodynamic simulations at every time-step of the computed evolution. The resulting models offer a more realistic depiction of the near-surface layers of stars with convective envelopes than parametrizations, such as mixing length theory, do. In this paper, we explore how this model improvement impacts on seismic and non-seismic properties of stellar models across the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. We show that the improved description of the outer boundary layers alters the predicted global stellar properties at different evolutionary stages. In a hare and hound exercise, we show that this plays a key role for asteroseismic analyses, as it, for instance, often shifts the inferred stellar age estimates by more than 10 per cent. Improper boundary conditions may thus introduce systematic errors that exceed the required accuracy of the PLATO space mission. Moreover, we discuss different approaches for computing stellar oscillation frequencies. We demonstrate that the so-called gas Γ1 approximation performs reasonably well for all main-sequence stars. Using a Monte Carlo approach, we show that the model frequencies of our hybrid solar models are consistent with observations within the uncertainties of the global solar parameters when using the so-called reduced Γ1 approximation. © 2020 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society.