The highest mass Kepler red giants – I. Global asteroseismic parameters of 48 stars

When low- and intermediate-mass stars evolve off the main sequence, they expand and cool into the red giant stages of evolution, which include those associated with shell H burning (the red giant branch), core He burning (the red clump), and shell He burning (the asymptotic giant branch). The majority of red giants have masses < 2 M_⊙, and red giants more massive than this are often excluded from major studies. Here we present a study of the highest-mass stars (M > 3.0 M_⊙) in the Kepler sample of 16,000 red giants. We begin by re-estimating their global seismic properties with new light curves, highlighting the differences between using the SAP and PDCSAP light curves provided by Kepler. We use the re-estimated properties to derive new mass estimates for the stars, ending with a final sample of 48 confirmed high-mass stars. We explore their oscillation envelopes, confirming the trends found in recent works such as low mean mode amplitude and wide envelopes. We find, through probabilistic means, that our sample is likely all core He burning stars. We measure their dipole and quadrupole mode visibilities and confirm that the dipole mode visibility tends to decrease with mass.