What have we learnt from pulsations of B-type stars?

Abstract

We review the main results obtained from our seismic studies of B-type main sequence pulsators, based on the ground-based, MOST, Kepler and BRITE observations. Important constraints on stellar opacities, convective overshooting and rotation are derived. In each studied case, a significant modification of the opacity profile at the depths corresponding to the temperature range $\log{T}\in (5.0-5.5)$ is indispensable to explain all pulsational properties. In particular, a huge amount of opacity (at least 200\%) at the depth of the temperature $\log T = 5.46$ (the "nickel" opacity) has to be added in early B-type stellar models to account for low frequencies which correspond to high-order g modes. The values of the overshooting parameter, $\alpha_{\rm ov}$, from our seismic studies is below 0.3. In the case of a few stars, the deeper interiors have to rotate faster to get the g-mode instability in the whole observed range.