Stellar pulsations of solar-like oscillators with CoRoT and Kepler

Abstract

Today, asteroseismology is entering in its golden age thanks to the observations provided by the CoRoT and Kepler space missions. In particular, we will make significant progresses in the understanding of the structure and evolution of solar-like oscillating stars. These stars have acoustic modes stochastically excited by the near-surface convection. Thanks to the observations already provided by these two missions, we have detected several hundred of stars showing solar-like oscillations in the main sequence and several thousands in the red- giant branch. Here, I give an overview of the present status of the most important results obtained from both missions for stellar physics and the potential use of asteroseismology to characterize stars harboring planets.