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Tidal Amplitudes in the Magellanic Cloud Population of Heartbeat Stars by MacLeod, Morgan; Loeb, Abraham is a scholarly article available to read on EtoBox.

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Heartbeat (HB) stars exhibit pulses in their light curves once per orbit due to ellipsoidal distortions from strong tides at periapse. We analyze the population of HB stars in the Magellanic Clouds captured by the OGLE survey, and provide broadband spectral energy distribution fitting to estimate physical properties of the HB stars. The HB stars span a wide range of luminosities, radii, and effective temperatures. However, we find that they cluster near loci of strong tidal influence at periapse, indicating that in nearly all cases, strong tides are indeed responsible for their photometric variability. HB stars tend to populate regions away from the main sequence, where stellar evolution is particularly rapid. We examine the distribution of tidal amplitudes, and show that these can be interpreted through a simplified model of radius growth through stellar evolution and orbital circularization through linear tidal dissipation. When we compare rates of tidal dissipation, we find differences between the modeled modified tidal quality factor among hot ($T_{\rm eff}>6250$~K), $Q_\ast' \gtrsim 10^7$, and cool ($T_{\rm eff}<6250$~K), $Q_\ast'\sim 10^5$, stars, which is qualitatively consi

Author

MacLeod, Morgan; Loeb, Abraham

Published

2025

Language

EN