The results of a search for stellar pulsations in M dwarf stars in the Kepler short-cadence (SC) data base are presented. This investigation covers all the cool and dwarf stars in the list of Dressing & Charbonneau, which were also observed in SC mode by the Kepler satellite. The sample has been enlarged via selection of stellar parameters (temperature, surface gravity and radius) with available Kepler Input Catalogue values together with JHK and riz photometry. In total, 87 objects observed by the Kepler mission in SC mode were selected and analysed using Fourier techniques. The detection threshold is below 10 μmag for the brightest objects and below20 μmag for about 40 per cent of the stars in the sample. However, no significant signal in the [~10,100] cd frequency domain that can be reliably attributable to stellar pulsations has been detected. The periodograms have also been investigated for solar-like oscillations in the > 100 cd region, but with unsuccessful results too. Despite these inconclusive photometric results, M dwarfs pulsation amplitudes may still be detected in radial velocity searches. Stateof- the-art coming instruments, like CARMENES near-infrared high-precision spectrograph, will play a key role in the possible detection. © 2016 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.

This research was supported by the Dirección General de Investigación (DGI) under projects AYA2011-30147-C03-01 and AYA2014-54348-C03-01. PJA acknowledges the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía for funding his contract. The authors thank an anonymous referee for his useful comments which helped to improve this work. The data included in this paper were collected by the Kepler mission. Funding for the Kepler mission is provided by the NASA Science Mission directorate. The authors thank the Kepler team for their generosity in releasing these data and for their outstanding efforts that have made these results possible. All the data presented in this work were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) at the Space Telescope Science Institute. STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under Nasa contract NASA-26555. Support for MAST for non-HST data is provided by the NASA Office of Space Science via grant NNX09AF08G and by other grants and contracts. This work made also use of the SIMBAD data base, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France.

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