Red Giants in Eclipsing Binary and Multiple-Star Systems: Modeling and Asteroseismic Analysis of 70 Candidates from Kepler Data

TL;DR

This study identifies 23 new candidate systems containing pulsating red giants in eclipsing binaries or hierarchical triples from Kepler data, enabling improved stellar modeling and understanding of stellar evolution.

Contribution

It presents the first systematic search for pulsating red giants in eclipsing binary systems using Kepler data, discovering 23 new candidates and expanding the known sample.

Findings

13 new pulsating red giants in eclipsing binaries

10 pulsating red giants in hierarchical triple systems

Systems exhibit diverse orbital eccentricities and spectral types

Abstract

Red-giant stars are an incredible source of information for testing models of stellar evolution, as asteroseismology has opened up a window into their interiors. Such insights are a direct result of the unprecedented data from space missions Kepler and CoRoT as well as recent theoretical advances. Eclipsing binaries are also fundamental astrophysical objects, and when coupled with asteroseismology, binaries would provide two independent methods to obtain masses and radii and exciting opportunities to develop highly constrained stellar models. The possibility of discovering pulsating red giants in eclipsing binary systems is therefore an important goal that could potentially offer very robust characterization of these systems. Hitherto, only 1 case has been discovered with Kepler. We cross-correlated the detected red-giant and eclipsing-binary catalogs from Kepler data to find candidate systems. Light-curve modeling and mean asteroseismic properties are combined to yield measurements of periods, masses, radii, temperatures, eclipse timing variations, core rotation rates, and red-giant evolutionary state. After elimination of false positives, out of the 70 systems common to the red-giant and eclipsing-binary catalogs we find 13 new strong candidates that are pulsating red giants in eclipsing binaries, and 10 more that are pulsating red giants in hierarchical triple systems. The systems span a range of orbital eccentricities, periods, and spectral types for the red-giant companion. One case even suggests a system composed of two red-giants. The discovery of pulsating red giants in multiple systems provides exciting test beds for precise astrophysical modeling, and follow-up spectroscopic observations of the candidate systems are encouraged.