Tidally Tilted Pulsations in HD 265435, a subdwarf B Star with a Close White Dwarf Companion

TL;DR

This paper reports the first detection of tidally tilted pulsations in a subdwarf B star within a close binary, expanding the understanding of TTPs and demonstrating their potential to probe stellar interiors in tight binaries.

Contribution

It provides the first conclusive evidence of tidally tilted pulsations in a subdwarf B star, showing they are not limited to delta Scuti stars and can be used for asteroseismic studies.

Findings

Detected 31 pulsation frequencies with sidebands separated by orbital frequency

Identified pulsation modes and constrained stellar interior properties

Expanded the class of known tidally tilted pulsators to include evolved subdwarf B stars

Abstract

Tidally tilted pulsators (TTPs) are an intriguing new class of oscillating stars in binary systems; in such stars, the pulsation axis coincides with the line of apsides, or semi-major axis, of the binary. All three TTPs discovered so far have been $\delta$~Scuti stars. In this Letter, we report the first conclusive discovery of tidally tilted pulsations in a subdwarf B (sdB) star. HD 265435 is an sdB--white dwarf binary with a 1.65-hr period that has been identified and characterized as the nearest potential Type Ia supernova progenitor. Using TESS 20-s cadence data from Sectors 44 and 45, we show that the pulsation axis of the sdB star has been tidally tilted into the orbital plane and aligned with the tidal axis of the binary. We identify 31 independent pulsation frequencies, 27 of which have between 1 and 7 sidebands separated by the orbital frequency ($\nu_{\rm orb}$), or multiples thereof. Using the observed amplitude and phase variability due to tidal tilting, we assign $\ell$ and $m$ values to most of the observed oscillation modes and use these mode identifications to generate preliminary asteroseismic constraints. Our work significantly expands our understanding of TTPs, as we now know that (i) they can be found in stars other than $\delta$~Scuti pulsators, especially highly-evolved stars that have lost their H-rich envelopes, and (ii) tidally tilted pulsations can be used to probe the interiors of stars in very tight binaries.