Photometric Analysis of the OGLE Heartbeat Stars

We present an analysis of 991 heartbeat stars (HBSs) from the OGLE Collection of Variable Stars. The sample consists of 512 objects located toward the Galactic bulge, 439 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, and 40 in the Small Magellanic Cloud. We model the I -band OGLE light curves using an analytical model of flux variations reflecting tidal deformations between stars. We present distributions of the model parameters that include the eccentricity, orbital inclination, and argument of the periastron but also the period–amplitude diagrams. On the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram, our HBS sample forms two separate groups of different evolutionary status. The first group, including about 90 systems with short orbital periods ( P ≲ 50 days), consists of an early-type primary star lying on (or close to) the main sequence. The second group, including about 900 systems with long orbital periods ( P ≳ 100 days), contains a red giant (RG). The position of the RG HBSs on the period–luminosity diagram strongly indicates their binary nature. They appear to be a natural extension of confirmed binary systems that include the OGLE ellipsoidal and long secondary period variables. We also present a time-series analysis leading to detection of tidally excited oscillations (TEOs). We identify such pulsations in about 5% of stars in the sample with a total of 78 different modes. This first relatively large homogeneous sample of TEOs allowed us to construct a diagram revealing the correlation between the TEO’s orbital harmonic number and the eccentricity of the host binary system.