Populations of tidal and pulsating variables in eclipsing binaries

TL;DR

This study characterizes a large sample of eclipsing binaries, identifying pulsating stars and analyzing their properties to understand stellar and orbital dynamics, with implications for future large-scale surveys.

Contribution

It provides the first large-scale characterization of eclipsing binaries with pulsating components, integrating asteroseismic and orbital data to reveal stellar properties and pulsation behaviors.

Findings

Identified 751 g-mode, 131 p-mode, and 48 hybrid pulsators.

Hybrid and p-mode pulsators show highly correlated stellar properties.

G-mode pulsators peak around classical g dor instability region, extending to higher masses.

Abstract

In this work, we seek to characterise a large sample of 14377 main sequence eclipsing binaries in terms of their stellar, asteroseismic, and orbital properties. We conduct manual vetting on a 4000-target subset of our full 14377-target sample to identify targets with pressure or gravity modes. We infer stellar properties including the mass, convective core mass, radius, and central H fraction for the primary using Gaia Data Release 3 effective temperature and luminosity estimates and a grid of asteroseismically calibrated stellar models. We use surface brightness ratio and radius ratio estimates from previous eclipse analysis to study the effect of binarity on our results. Our manual vetting identifies 751 candidate g-mode pulsators, 131 p-mode pulsators, and a further 48 hybrid pulsators. The inferred stellar properties of the hybrid and p-mode pulsators are highly correlated, while the orbital properties of the hybrid pulsators align best with the g-mode pulsators. The g-mode pulsators themselves show a distribution that peaks around the classical g dor instability region but extends continuously towards higher masses, with no detectable divide between the classical g dor and SPB instability regions. There is evidence at the population level for a heightened level of tidal efficiency in stars showing g-mode or hybrid variability. Correcting the primary mass inference for binarity based on eclipse measurements of the surface brightness and radius ratios results in a relatively small shift towards lower masses. This work provides a working initial characterisation of this sample from which more detailed analyses folding in asteroseismic information can be built. It also provides a foundational understanding of the limitations and capabilities of this kind of rapid, scalable analysis that will be highly relevant in planning the exploitation of future large-scale binary surveys.