A physically inspired model of Dip d792 and d1519 of the Kepler light curve seen at KIC8462852

TL;DR

This paper proposes a physically inspired mathematical model to explain the unusual light curve dips of KIC 8462852, suggesting large stellar beams and orbiting clouds as potential causes, and extends the model to multiple dips.

Contribution

It introduces a novel physically motivated approximation model for the star's light curve, incorporating large stellar beams and orbiting clouds, and extends it to multiple dips for better fit.

Findings

Model fits essential parts of the dips

Encouraging results with multiple beams

Recommends further refinement of the model

Abstract

The star KIC 8462852 shows a very unusual and hard to comprehend light curve. The dip d7922 absorbs 16% of the starlight. The light curve is unusually smooth but the very steep edges make it hard to find a simple natural explanation by covering due to comets or other well-known planetary objects. We describe a mathematical approximation to the light curve, which is motivated by a physically meaningful event of a large stellar beam which generates an orbiting cloud. The data might fit to the science fiction idea of star lifting, a mining technology that could extract star matter. We extend the model to d1519 and d1568 using multiple beams and get an encouraging result that fits essential parts of the dips but misses other parts of the measured flux. We recommend further exploration of this concept with refined models.