A CLASS OF ECCENTRIC BINARIES WITH DYNAMIC TIDAL DISTORTIONS DISCOVERED WITH KEPLER

By S. Thompson, Mark E. Everett, F. Mullally, T. Barclay, S. Howell, M. Still, J. Rowe, J. Christiansen, D. Kurtz, K. Hambleton and 3 more. 2012

137 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We have discovered a class of eccentric binary systems within the Kepler data archive that have dynamic tidal distortions and tidally induced pulsations. Each has a uniquely shaped light curve that is characterized by periodic brightening or variability at timescales of 4–20 days, frequently accompanied by shorter period oscillations. We can explain the dominant features of the entire class with orbitally varying tidal forces that occur in close, eccentric binary systems. The large variety of light curve shapes arises from viewing systems at different angles. This hypothesis is supported by spectroscopic radial velocity measurements for five systems, each showing evidence of being in an eccentric binary system. Prior to the discovery of these 17 new systems, only four stars, where KOI-54 is the best example, were known to have evidence of these dynamic tides and tidally induced oscillations. We perform preliminary fits to the light curves and radial velocity data, present the overall properties of this class, and discuss the work required to accurately model these systems.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0129454ffe5f02905f2b3da169ea00b7c9c8193c

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. D. Charbonneau
2. Timothy Morton
3. D. Huber
4. G. Marcy
5. Jon Fortney
6. J. Johnson
7. J. Winn
8. E. Gaidos

In Instrumentation

1. D. Charbonneau
2. Timothy Morton
3. J. Southworth
4. G. Marcy
5. D. Huber
6. E. Gaidos
7. Jon Fortney
8. J. Winn

Citations in the corpus

• AUTOMATIC CLASSIFICATION OF KEPLER PLANETARY TRANSIT CANDIDATES (2014, background): “NTPs are caused by instrumental, systematic noise (Caldwell et al. 2010), and stars with high variability, such as “heartbeat” stars (Thompson et al. 2012).”
• Tidal Dissipation in Stars and Giant Planets (2014, methodology): “Kepler has also been used to observe dynamical tides in several eccentric binary stars (Thompson et al. 2012).”
• KEPLER ECLIPSING BINARY STARS. VII. THE CATALOG OF ECLIPSING BINARIES FOUND IN THE ENTIRE KEPLER DATA SET (2015, background): “Heartbeat stars are a subclass of eccentric ellipsoidal variables introduced by Thompson et al. (2012).”
• The Close Binary Fraction of Solar-type Stars Is Strongly Anticorrelated with Metallicity (2018, background): “In general, systems with dp<1% include not only true EBs but also ellipsoidal binaries, transiting planets, and heartbeat stars, which are eccentric binaries that induce tidal distortions and dynamical oscillations near periastron (Thompson et al. 2012).”
• A comprehensive study of the Kepler triples via eclipse timing (2015, background): “The dynamical contribution and the AME-term would, however, be different for quadratures, but, practically speaking, these effects would have needed considerable extra care only for ‘heart-beat’ binaries (Thompson et al. 2012), of which only one, KIC 03766353, is covered in this paper.”
• VALIDATION OF KEPLER'S MULTIPLE PLANET CANDIDATES. III. LIGHT CURVE ANALYSIS AND ANNOUNCEMENT OF HUNDREDS OF NEW MULTI-PLANET SYSTEMS (2014, background): “While the vast majority of the catalog is dedicated to exoplanet candidates and eclipsing binary stars, the list contains some astrophysically interesting light curves that do not show transits, such as Heartbeat Stars (Thompson et al. 2012).”
• PLANETARY CANDIDATES OBSERVED BY KEPLER IV: PLANET SAMPLE FROM Q1–Q8 (22 MONTHS) (2013, background): “Contributing are numerous types of astrophysical variability: stellar oscillations (Aerts et al. 2010), overcontact binaries (Sirko & Paczyński 2003), tidal dynamic distortions (Thompson et al. 2012), and broad-band “red noise”.”
• PLANETARY CANDIDATES OBSERVED BY KEPLER. VI. PLANET SAMPLE FROM Q1–Q16 (47 MONTHS) (2015, background): “This includes, but is not limited to, instrumental artifacts, non-eclipsing variable stars (e.g., heartbeat stars, Thompson et al. 2012), and spurious detections.”
• PHYSICS OF ECLIPSING BINARIES. II. TOWARD THE INCREASED MODEL FIDELITY (2016, background): “That said, there is a particularly well suited test-bed for studying the validity of volume conservation in the limit of high eccentricities: highly eccentric ellipsoidal variables (also known as heartbeat stars; Thompson et al. 2012) that host red giants.”
• REVISED STELLAR PROPERTIES OF KEPLER TARGETS FOR THE QUARTER 1–16 TRANSIT DETECTION RUN (2013, background): “…and red-giant stars (Bedding et al. 2011; Beck et al. 2011; Mosser et al. 2012b; Deheuvels et al. 2012), an order of magnitude increase of known dwarf stars with detected oscillations (Chaplin et al. 2011), and the discovery of tidal pulsations in eccentric binary systems (Thompson et al. 2012).”