Spin-orbit alignment of exoplanet systems: how can Asteroseismology help us?

Measuring the obliquities of exoplanet-host stars provides invaluable diagnostic information for theories of planetary formation and migration. Most of these results have so far been obtained by measuring the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect, clearly favoring systems that harbor hot Jupiters. While it would be extremely helpful to extend these measurements to long-period and multiple-planet systems, it is also true that the latter systems tend to involve smaller planets, making it ever so difficult to apply such techniques. Asteroseismology provides a powerful method of determining the inclination of the stellar spin axis from an analysis of the rotationally-induced splittings of the oscillation modes. This provides an estimate of the obliquity independently of other methods. The applicability of the asteroseismic method is determined by the stellar properties and not by the signal-to-noise ratio of the transit data. Here we present a recap of the spin-orbit geometry, explain how the asteroseismic method works, and review previous applications of the method to exoplanet-host stars.