Asteroseismology of the b Cephei star R Eridani: massive exploration of standard and non-standard stellar models to fit the oscillation data

We present the results of a detailed seismic modelling of the b Cephei star R Eridani with the Liege evolution and pulsation codes. We selected four clearly detected, well-identified and independent pulsation modes from the frequency spectrum obtained from a recent five-month multisite, multitechnique campaign, while previous modelling work only took into account three frequencies. We show by means of a massive exploration of the parameter space that no standard stellar model both matches and excites these four observed modes, in contrast to the conclusion reached when considering only three frequencies. Therefore, we have considered stellar models with different metal mixtures and different initial hydrogen abundance values. We show that an increase in the relative number fraction of iron throughout the whole star or a large decrease in the initial hydrogen abundance make the stellar models matching the four selected modes satisfy all observational constraints and we provide the general properties of the best such physical models.