Third components with elliptical orbits in the eclipsing binaries: AB Cas, AF Gem, AR Boo, BF Vir and CL Aur

TL;DR

This study analyzes five eclipsing binary stars to detect third components with elliptical orbits using minima timing data, revealing sinusoidal O-C variations likely caused by light-time effects and mass transfer.

Contribution

It introduces a method to identify third components with elliptical orbits in eclipsing binaries through minima timing analysis and modeling of O-C diagrams.

Findings

Detection of sinusoidal O-C variations indicating third components

Estimated masses and orbital parameters of third bodies

Evidence of mass transfer affecting orbital trends

Abstract

In this research, five eclipsing binary stars were studied: AB Cas, AF Gem, AR Boo, BF Vir and CL Aur. The large sets of moments of minima were used: from the international BRNO database and amateur observations from the database AAVSO. Firstly, moments of minima for AAVSO observations were obtained (totally - 222 minima). The software MAVKA was used. It was kindly provided by Kateryna D. Andrych and Ivan L. Andronov (2019OEJV..197...65A) and approximation with various methods in order to find the best fit. Then all obtained moments of minima were combined and O-C diagrams were plotted. For all stars these diagrams represented sinusoidal-like oscillations with superposition of parabolic trend. One of the possible reasons for such oscillations could be presence of well-known light-time effect (LTE) caused by third component with elliptical orbit. Parabolic trend was explained as mass transfer between components of binary system. For all these stars we computed possible mass of the third component, orbital elements, mass transfer rate and errors for all computed values.