Coherent oscillators—astronomical sources that pulse or oscillate in a phase-stable way over long timescales—have been useful astrophysical tools. For two examples: Stably pulsing pulsars were used to discover gravitational radiation (and are being used to find the stochastic background). Delta-scuti star asteroseismic modes were used to find orbital companions. This led undergrad Nana Miller (NYU) and me and others to look for all the coherent modes we can find among all the stars in the NASA Kepler Mission data. We have have technology to find modes, and we have technology to test for coherence. Now we have to do injection–recovery tests to estimate our detection limits. Today I delivered a simple plan for doing injections.
Our plan is to produce a catalog, not of stars but of modes, every one of which has a coherence time that is longer than the lifetime (4 years) of the Kepler Mission. Then: What do we use them for?
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