Mode Switching in Two Blue Large Amplitude Pulsators observed by OGLE, KMTNet and DREAMS

Abstract

Blue large-amplitude pulsators (BLAPs) are rare, hot, short-period pulsating stars whose rapid oscillations provide a unique probe of stellar interiors and atmospheres. In this paper, we study two short-period BLAPs in the Galactic bulge, OGLE-BLAP-142 ($P\approx 6.6$ min) and OGLE-BLAP-148 ($P\approx 7.5$ min), by combining light curves from the OGLE, KMTNet, and DREAMS surveys, spanning 17 years with cadences ranging from minutes to hours to days. We perform Generalized Lomb-Scargle periodogram analyses of their light curves and identify, for each BLAP, three closely spaced pulsation modes separated by $\sim 1\%$. The dominant mode can switch within timescales of order a year, accompanied by a likely blueward color shift ($\sim 0.1$--$0.2$ mag). The yearly period excursions of the resolved mode families imply apparent $|\dot{P}/P|$ values of order $10^{-6}$--$10^{-4}\mathrm{y}{\mathrm{r}}^{-1}$, large enough to mimic or exceed smooth evolutionary period changes. One mode family in OGLE-BLAP-148 shows a coherent decade-long drift at the $\sim 10^{-5}\mathrm{y}{\mathrm{r}}^{-1}$ level, but its failure to extrapolate to the earliest and latest epochs suggests a transient mode-family drift rather than secular evolution. Such close-spaced multiple pulsations and mode switching may be common among BLAPs with periods shorter than 10 min, and their physical origin remains unclear.

17 pages, 8 figures