Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variable stars

The aim of the present paper is to establish the explicit forms of the photometric perturbations, in the frequency-domain, of close binaries, whose components are distorted by axial rotation and mutual tidal action.Following a brief introduction, Section 2 describes the light changes and the photometric perturbations within eclipses in the frequency-domain. In Section 3 the explicit forms of the perturbations for occultation eclipses terminating in totality are given; while in Section 4 analogous results are established for transit eclipses terminating in annular phases. In this latter case the results can be expressed in terms of the photometric perturbations for total eclipses and in terms of some series. To facilitate applications to actual stars these series have been computed and their results are represented in Table I and by the Graphs. Finally, Section 5 gives a discussion of the results.An extension of the photometric perturbations to the case of partial eclipses will be given in a subsequent communication.     

Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variable stars

The aim of the present paper is to find the eclipse perturbations, in the frequency-domain, of close eclipsing systems exhibiting partial eclipses.After a brief introduction, in Section 2 we shall deal with the evaluation of thea _n ^(l) integrals for partial eclipses and give them in terms ofa ₀ ⁰ ,a ₀ ⁰ (of the associated -functions) and integrals; while Section 3 gives the eclipse perturbations arising from the tidal and rotational distortion of the two components. The are given for uniformly bright discs (h=1) as well as for linear and quadratic limb-darkening (h=2 and 3, respectively).Finally, Section 4 gives a brief discussion of the results and the way in which they can be applied to practical cases.     

Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variables

The aim of the present paper has been to construct analytic expressions for incomplete Fourier transforms underlying Kitamura's method for an analysis of the light curves of eclipsing binary systems (Kitamura, 1965).The expansions established for Kitamura's coefficientsc _n ands _n have been used as a basis for checking numerical accuracy of these coefficients tabulated by Kitamura in 1967; and the outcome bespeaks a high quality of his tables constructed by numerical quadratures.     

Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variables. XIII

New expressions for the fractional loss of light _l ⁰ have been derived in the simple forms of rapidly converging expansions to the series of Chebyshev polynomials, Jacobi polynomials, and Kopal'sJ-integrals. In these expansions, which are a supplement to those given by Kopal (1977b), variablesk andh occur in different products that simplify the numerical computation. The treatment follows the new definition of _l ⁰ which has been recently developed by Kopal (1977a).     

Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variables,II

The aim of the present paper will be to extend the Fourier methods of analysis of the light curves of eclipsing binaries, outlined in our previous communication (Kopal, 1975) in connection with systems whose components would appear as uniformly bright discs, to systems whose components exhibit discs characterized by an arbitrary radially-symmetrical distribution of brightness —i.e., an arbitrary law of darkening towards the limb — be it linear or nonlinear.In Section 2 which follows a few brief introductory remarks, fundamental equations will be set up which govern the light changes arising from the mutual eclipses of limb-darkened stars — be such eclipses total, partial or annular; and Section 3 will contain a closed algebraic solution for the elements of the occulation eclipses terminating in total phase. Such a solution proves to be no more complicated than it turned out to be for uniformly bright discs in our previous paper; and calls for no special functions for the purpose — as will be put in proper perspective in the concluding Section 4.The cases of transit eclipses terminating in an annular phase, of partial eclipses of occulation or transit type, will be similarly dealt with by Fourier methods in the next paper of the present series.     

Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variables,IX

The aim of the present paper will be to detail the procedure outlined in our previous investigations (Kopal, 1975; Kopalet al., 1976) for a solution of the elements of distorted eclipsing systems by a Fourier analysis of their light changes. This procedure—which constitutes an equivalent, in the frequency-domain, of rectification hitherto practised in the time-domain — should enable us to free the observed momentsA _2m of the light curves from all photometric effects of distortion (between minima as well as within eclipses) — a feat impossible in the time-domain except under very restricted conditions — and thus to make it possible to obtain the geometrical elements of the eclipses which should be free from any obvious source of systematic errors.     

Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variables,XVI

The practical procedures for the solutions of the elements of any eclipsing system in the frequency-domain have been described in a previous paper of this series (Kopal and Demircan, 1978, Paper XIV). The fundamental quantities from which we depart in quest of our solution are twog-functions defining by the momentsA _2m (see Equations (2.13)–(2.16) in Paper XIV, or Equations (3.2)–(3.6) in Paper XV: Demircan, 1978b). If we establish the observational values for these functions, they constitute two independent relations between the unknown parametersa andc _o, and can be numerically solved for them with the aid of the general expressions for the respective moments. However, the determinacy of these parameters depends on not only the accuracy of observations but also the employedg-functions. For better understanding of the geometrical determinacy of the eclipse parametersa andc _o, different combinations of the momentsA _2m have been worked out asg-functions. For the index 2m, the values between 0 and 6 were applied. It has been noted that the behaviour of these functions vary but very little with applied different combinations of the moments. A choice of the most convenient moments to obtain a good determinacy for the eclipse elements were discussed. In this connection, (i) them-dependence of the moments, and the errors in their observational values have been considered, (ii) different practical procedures for the solution of eclipse elements were introduced, and (iii) different type of moments were tested.     

Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variables,XIV

The aim of the present paper will be to utilize the results obtained in the preceding papers of this series for the development of practical procedures for obtaining the elements of any eclipsing system from the observed photometric data by their analysis in the frequency-domain, for any type of eclipses, any proximity of the two components, and any degree of the law of limbdarkening of the eclipsed star.In Section 2, which follows a brief introduction to the subject, procedures will be developed which should permit us to perform such an analysis — by hand or automatic machine computation — for the case of mutual eclipses in binary systems the components of which can be regarded as spheres; and whose apparent discs are characterized by an arbitrary radially symmetrical distribution of surface brightness. In Section 3 we shall generalize these procedures to systems consisting of arbitrarily distorted stars.Paper dedicated to Professor Hannes Alfvén on the occasion of his 70th birthday, 30 May, 1978.     

Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variables,XI

The aim of the present paper will be to introduce a new definition of the loss of light suffered by mutual eclipses of the components of close binary systems: namely, as across-correlation of two apertures representing the eclipsing and eclipsed discs.The advantages of such a strategy over the more conventional (geometrical) approach are (a) greater symmetry of the respective expressions; (b) greater affinity of expressions arising from distortion with those expressing the light changes due to eclipses of spherical stars; and (c) greater freedom in dealing with the effects of particular distribution of brightness over the disc of the star undergoing eclipse (generalized limb-darkening), as well as of possible semi-transparency of the eclipsing component (Wolf-Rayet stars!). In point of fact, none of these tasks could be handled with equal ease by any other technique; nor could the corresponding loss of light be so automated by any other approach.In Section 2 which follows brief introductory remarks we shall evaluate the loss of light arising from distribution of brightness within the aperture undergoing eclipse, and appropriate opacity of the occulting disc. In Section 3 we shall take advantage of these new forms of our results to deduce a number of new properties of the eclipse functions — both algebraic and differential — which have so far escaped attention and which are of considerable practical interest. Lastly, in Section 4 we shall generalize the same concepts to the modification of the light changes caused by the departures of the respective apertures from circular forms.It will be shown that all these phenomena can be most naturally described in terms of Hankel transforms of the products of two Bessel functions with orders depending on the physical characteristics (distribution of brightness; opacity) of the two components; while the geometry of the system (i.e., the fractional radiir _1,2 of the two stars; or the inclinationi of their orbit) enter only through their arguments. Such formulation of our problem should bring a theory of the light changes of eclipsing variables in much closer contact with the adjacent parts of physical optics.     

Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variables,IV

The methods of analysis of the light changes of eclipsing variables in the frequency domain, developed in our previous papers (Kopal, 1975b, c) for total or annular eclipses of arbitrarily limbdarkened stars, have now been extended to the case of partial eclipses of occultation as well as transit type. In Section 2 which follows brief introductory remarks the even Fourier sine coefficients are formulated — in the guise of the momentsA _2m of the light curve — in terms of the elements of the eclipse; and their use for a solution for the elements is detailed in Section 3. A brief appendix containing certain auxiliary tables to facilitate this task concludes the paper. An extension of the same method to an analysis of the light changes exhibited by close eclipsing systems — in which the photometric proximity effects arising from mutual distortion can no longer be ignored — will be given in the subsequent paper of this series.     

Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variables,XIX

The aim of the present paper has been to generalize the methods previously developed for analysis of the light changes of eclipsing binary systems in the frequency-domain to cases in which the components of such systems revolve in eccentric orbits. It is shown that these methods can indeed be generalized to systems with eccentric orbits provided that the light momentsA _2m deduced from such eclipses are suitably re-defined in terms of the true, rather than mean, anomaly in the relative orbit; and that due attention is paid to the unit of length in terms of which the fractional radii of the two stars are expressed. When this is done the Fourier methods continue to be applicable to all types of eclipses exhibited by eccentric binary systems — whether these are occultations or transits; total, annular or partial.An application of these methods to practical cases has been postponed for a subsequent communication.     

Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variables,XXIV

The aim of the present paper will be to evaluate numerically Jacobian and other functions which have been discussed in more detail in a previous paper of this series (Edalati, 1978b, Paper XXII), and also choose the most convenient moments to obtain a good determination for the unknown eclipse parametersa andc ₀. More than 12 different pairs ofg-functions for real values ofm have been investigated numerically and diagrammatically. The behaviour ofg-functions depends but very little on different combination of the moments, and related diagrams are approximately the same asg ₂ andg ₄ (Kopal and Demircan, 1978, Paper XIV).The behaviour of the vanishing Jacobian, arising from different pairs ofg-functions for real values ofm1 has been shown diagrammatically in terms ofa andc ₀. Accordingly, we obtain the optimum combination of the moments (i.e.,A ₆,A ₇,A ₈ andA ₉) ing-functionsg ₇ andg ₈. It has been noted that the behaviour of theg-functions which depend on the combinations of the higher order moments (i.e.,m5) have been ruled out, because the proportional error of the momentsA _2m increases with increasing values of realm. The automated method has been tested successfully on the light curve of RT Per (Mancusoet al., 1977; Edalati, 1978a). Finally, a comparison is given of the elements of RT Per arising from two different pairs ofg-functions, i.e.,g ₂,g ₄ (Edalati, 1978a) andg ₇,g ₈ for the light curves analysis.     

Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variables,XII

The aim of the present paper will be to make use of the expressions, established in Paper XI, for the fractional loss of light _l ⁰ of arbitrarily limb-darkened stars in the form of Hankel transforms of zero order, in order to evaluate the explicit forms of the _l ⁰'s for different types of eclipses (Section 2), as well as of the momentsA _2mof the respective light curves (Section 3)-in a closed form; or in terms of expansions that converge under all circumstances envisaged. Particular attention will be directed to a connection between these expansions and other functions already available in tabular form; or to alternative forms amenable to automatic computation.     

Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variables,XVIII

The aim of the present paper has been to establish explicit expressions for the photometric perturbations in the light changes of close eclipsing systems, arising from the mutual distortion of the components, for any type of eclipses — be these occultations or transits; partial, total, or annular — and exhibiting arbitrary distribution of brightness (limb- or gravity-darkening) over the apparent disc of the eclipsed star.These perturbations have been expressed in terms of certain general types of series that can be easily programmed for automatic computation. They represent a generalization of results previously obtained by Kopal (1975) or Livaniou (1977, 1978) in so far as the expansions derived in this paper hold good for any real (not necessarily integral) value ofm>0. As such, they can be used to free from the photometric proximity effects within eclipses the empirical momentsA _2m of the light curves of non-integral orders, and the task performed within seconds of real time on high-speed automatic computers now available. Closed-form expressions for such perturbations, obtaining in the case of total eclipses, are given correctly to terms of first order in quantities which represent the distortion of each component.     

Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variables,XXI

The aim of the present paper is to deduce some further properties of the fundamental quantities inherent in the frequency-domain approach-such as the fractional loss of light _l ⁰ and momentsA _2m of the light curves of eclipsing variables; and also to develop an iterative method for the solution of two key eclipse parametersa andc ₀ in terms of the observed quantities. This should facilitate practical applications of the methods developed in the preceding papers of this series for the frequency-domain light curve analysis of eclipsing variables.     

Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variables,XX

In the present paper _n ⁰ , for occulation and transit eclipses of partial phases, are evaluated numerically by means of the Runge-Kutta methods. Section 2 contains the required differential equations of _n ⁰ with respect to the modulusX orC, and Section 3 includes the numerical method of the solutions of these differential equations. Theoretical values of ₀ ⁰ and ₁ ⁰ , with corresponding values ofC, are also added in this section.     

Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variables,XV

A new general expression for the theoretical momentsA _2m of the light curves of eclipsing systems has been presented in the form of infinite series expansion. In this expansion, the terms have been given as the product of two different polynomials which satisfy certain three-term recursion formulae, and the coefficients diminish rapidly with increasing number of terms. Thus, the numerical values of the theoretical momentsA _2m can be generated recursively up to four significant figures for any given set of eclipse elements. This can be utilized to solve the eclipse elements in two ways: (i) with an indirect method (for the procedures see Paper XIV, Kopal and Demircan, 1978), (ii) with a direct method as minimization to the observational momentsA _2m (area fitting). The procedures given in Paper XIV for obtaining the elements of any eclipsing system consisting of spherical stars have been automated by making use of the new expression for the momentsA _2m of the light curves. The theoretical functionsf ₀,f ₂,f ₄,f ₆,g ₂ andg ₄ which are the functions ofa andc ₀, have been used to solve the eclipse elements from the observed photometric data. The closed-form expressions for the functionsf ₂,f ₄ andf ₆ have also been derived (Section 3) in terms of Kopal'sI-integrals.The automated methods for obtaining the eclipse elements from one minimum alone have been tested on the light curves of YZ (21) Cassiopeiae under the spherical model assumptions. The results of these applications will be given in Section 5 which follows a brief introduction to the procedure we followed.     

Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variables,VII

A new method has been developed for the evaluation of the light momentsA _2m, required for a Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variables, in terms of the elements of the eclipsea method simpler and more straightforward than that previously developed in so far as it dispenses with the auxiliary coefficientsa _n ^(l) andb _n ^(l) used before at the intermediary stage. Our present method is applicable to an analysis of the eclipses of spherical stars of any type, arbitrarily darkened at the limb; and its results agree with those previously established in Papers III and IV of this series in less explicit form.     

Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variables,X

The aim of the present paper will be to develop methods for computation of the Fourier transforms of the light curves of eclipsing variables — due to any type of eclipses — as a function of a continuous frequency variablev. For light curves which are symmetrical with respect to the conjunctions (but only then) these transforms prove to be real functions ofv, and expressible as rapidly convergent expansions in terms of the momentsA _2m+1 of the light curves of odd orders. The transforms are found to be strongly peaked in the low-frequency domain (attaining a maximum forv=0), and become numerically insignificant forv>3. This is even more true of their power spectra.The odd momentsA _2m+1 — not encountered so far in our previous papers — are shown in Section 3 of the present communication to be expressible as infinite series in terms of the even momentsA _2m well known to us from Papers I–IV; and polynomial expressions are developed for approximating them to any desired degree of accuracy. The numerical efficiency of such expressions will be tested in Section 4, by application to a practical case, with satisfactory results.Lastly, in Section 5, an appeal to the Wiener-Khinchin theorem (relating the power spectra with autocorrelation function of the light curves) and Parseval's theorem on Fourier series will enable us to extend our previous methods for a specification of quadratic moments of the light curves in terms of the linear ones.     

Fourier analysis of the light curves of eclipsing variables,V

The methods of analysis of the light changes of eclipsing variables in the frequency-domain, developed in our previous papers (Kopal 1975a, b, c, d) for an interpretation of mutual eclipses in systems consisting of spherical stars, have now been extended to analyse the light variations — between minima as well as within eclipses — ofclose binaries whose components are distorted by axial rotation and mutual tidal action. Following a brief introduction (Section 1) in which the need of this new approach will be expounded, in Sections 2 and 3 we shall deduce the theoretical changes of close eclipsing systems between minima (Section 2) as well as within eclipses (Section 3), which in Sections 4 and 5 will be analysed in the frequency-domain; and explicit formulae obtained which should enable us to separate the photometric proximity and eclipse effects directly from the observed data as they stand-without the need of any preliminary ‘rectification’. Section 6 will contain the explicit forms of the expressions for photometric perturbations in the frequency-domain, due to rotational and tidal distortion of both stars; and the concluding Section 7 will then be concerned with practical aspects of the application of these new methods to an analysis of the observed light changes of close eclipsing systems — in which the proximity and eclipse effects cannot be distinguished from each other by mere inspection.