A search for binary candidates among the fundamental mode RR Lyrae stars observed by Kepler

Abstract

Although roughly half of all stars are considered to be part of binary or multiple systems, there are only two confirmed cases of RR Lyrae pulsators with companions. One of them is TU Uma (Wade et al 1999) - a classical RR Lyrae star in a very eccentric orbit - and the other is OGLE-BLG-RRLYR-02792 (Pietrzynski et al 2012). Considering the wealth of well-studied RR Lyrae stars, this number is astoundingly low. Having more RR Lyrae stars in binary systems at hand would be extremely valuable to get independent measurements of the masses. The data from the Kepler mission with their unprecedented precision and the long time span of about four years offer a unique possibility to systematically search for the signatures of binarity in RR Lyrae stars. Using the pulsation as a clock, we studied the variations in the timing of maximum light to hunt for possible binary systems in the sample.

CoRoT Symposium 3 / Kepler KASC-7 joint meeting, Toulouse, July 2014. To be published by EPJ Web of Conferences

References in corpus (2)

• RR-Lyrae-type pulsations from a 0.26-solar-mass star in a binary system
• Stellar evolution through the ages: period variations in galactic RRab stars as derived from the GEOS database and TAROT telescopes

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• Multiplicity of Galactic Cepheids and RR Lyrae stars from Gaia DR2 - I. Binarity from proper motion anomaly
• New RR Lyrae variables in binary systems
• Multiplicity of Galactic Cepheids and RR Lyrae stars from Gaia DR2 -- II. Resolved common proper motion pairs
• Cyclic variations in O-C diagrams of field RR Lyrae stars as a result of LiTE
• KIC 2831097 - A 2-year orbital-period RR Lyrae binary candidate