Long time-scale behavior of the Blazhko effect from rectified Kepler data

TL;DR

This study analyzes 15 Blazhko RR Lyrae stars using four years of Kepler data, revealing a higher incidence of multiperiodic modulation, potential resonance effects, and excitation of the second radial overtone mode, providing unprecedented insights into the Blazhko effect.

Contribution

The paper presents the longest, most precise Kepler-based analysis of Blazhko RR Lyrae stars, uncovering higher multiperiodic modulation rates and new mode excitations.

Findings

80% of stars are multiperiodically modulated, higher than previous estimates.

Detected excitation of the second radial overtone mode in three stars.

Modulation periods often have ratios close to small integers, suggesting resonances.

Abstract

In order to benefit from the 4-year unprecedented precision of the Kepler data, we extracted light curves from the pixel photometric data of the Kepler space telescope for 15 Blazhko RR Lyrae stars. For collecting all the flux from a given target as accurately as possible, we defined tailor-made apertures for each star and quarter. In some cases the aperture finding process yielded sub-optimal result, because some flux have been lost even if the aperture contains all available pixels around the star. This fact stresses the importance of those methods that rely on the whole light curve instead of focusing on the extrema (O-C diagrams and other amplitude independent methods). We carried out detailed Fourier analysis of the light curves and the amplitude independent O-C diagram. We found 12 (80%) multiperiodically modulated stars in our sample. This ratio is much higher than previously found. Resonant coupling between radial modes, a recent theory to explain of the Blazhko effect, allows single, multiperiodic or even chaotic modulations. Among the stars with two modulations we found three stars (V355 Lyr, V366 Lyr and V450 Lyr) where one of the periods dominate in amplitude modulation, but the other period has larger frequency modulation amplitude. The ratio between the primary and secondary modulation periods is almost always very close to ratios of small integer numbers. It may indicate the effect of undiscovered resonances. Furthermore, we detected the excitation of the second radial overtone mode $f_2$ for three stars where this feature was formerly unknown. Our data set comprises the longest continuous, most precise observations of Blazhko RR Lyrae stars ever published. These data which is made publicly available will be unprecedented for years to come.