Astronomical Cardiology: A Search For Heartbeat Stars Using $\text{Gaia}$ and $\text{TESS}$

Abstract

Heartbeat stars are a subclass of binary stars with short periods, high eccentricities, and phase-folded light curves that resemble an electrocardiogram. We start from the $\text{Gaia}$ catalogs of spectroscopic binaries and use $\text{TESS}$ photometry to identify 112 new heartbeat star systems. We fit their phase-folded light curves with an analytic model to measure their orbital periods, eccentricities, inclinations, and arguments of periastron. We then compare these orbital parameters to the $\text{Gaia}$ spectroscopic orbital solution. Our periods and eccentricities are consistent with the $\text{Gaia}$ solutions for 85$\%$ of the single-line spectroscopic binaries but only 20$\%$ of the double-line spectroscopic binaries. For the two double-line spectroscopic binary heartbeat stars with consistent orbits, we combine the $\text{TESS}$ phase-folded light curve and the $\text{Gaia}$ velocity semi-amplitudes to measure the stellar masses and radii with $\text{PHOEBE}$. In a statistical analysis of the heartbeat star population, we find that non-giant heartbeat stars have evolved off the main sequence and that the fraction of the systems that are heartbeat stars rises rapidly with effective temperature.

11 pages, 12 figures, Published in the Open Journal of Astrophysics