Analysis of the Irregular Pulsations of AC Her

Abstract

The AAVSO lightcurve data of the irregularly pulsating star AC Herculis of the RV Tau class are analysed. The lightcurve is shown to be incompatible with a periodic, or even multiperiodic pulsation, even if allowance is made for evolution. Instead the best explanation is that the irregularly alternating cycles are a manifestation of low dimensional chaos. The lightcurve is found to be generated by a 3 or 4 dimensional dynamics -- 3 or 4 first order ODEs. The (Lyapunov) fractal dimension of the underlying dynamic attractor is computed to be d_L ~ 2.2, smaller than the value of d_L ~ 3.1 found for R Sct.

arXiv commentAstronomy & Astrophysics (submitted, June 1997) -- 8 pages. e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]