Analysis of the Irregular Pulsations of AC Her
Astrophysics
2008-02-03 v1 chao-dyn
Chaotic Dynamics
Abstract
The AAVSO lightcurve data of the irregularly pulsating star AC Herculis of the RV Tau class are analysed. The lightcurve is shown to be incompatible with a periodic, or even multiperiodic pulsation, even if allowance is made for evolution. Instead the best explanation is that the irregularly alternating cycles are a manifestation of low dimensional chaos. The lightcurve is found to be generated by a 3 or 4 dimensional dynamics -- 3 or 4 first order ODEs. The (Lyapunov) fractal dimension of the underlying dynamic attractor is computed to be d_L ~ 2.2, smaller than the value of d_L ~ 3.1 found for R Sct.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9707099,
title = {Analysis of the Irregular Pulsations of AC Her},
author = {Z. Kollath and J. R. Buchler and T. Serre and J. Mattei},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9707099},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
Astronomy & Astrophysics (submitted, June 1997) -- 8 pages. e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]