Asteroseismology of hot subdwarf B stars observed with TESS: discovery of two new gravity mode pulsating stars

Abstract

TIC 033834484 and TIC 309658435 are long-period pulsating subdwarf B stars, which were observed extensively (675 and 621 days, respectively) by the Transiting Exoplanet Sur-vey Satellite (TESS). The high-precision photometric light curve reveals the presence of more than 40 pulsation modes including both stars. All the oscillation frequencies that we found are associated with gravity (g)-mode pulsations, with frequencies spanning from ∼80 µHz (2 500 s) to ∼400 µHz (12 000 s). We utilize the asteroseismic tools including asymptotic period spacings and rotational frequency multiplets in order to identify the pulsational modes. We found dipole (l = 1) mode sequences for both targets and calculate the mean period spacing of dipole modes (ΔPl=1), which allows us to identify the modes. Frequency multiplets provide a rotation period of ∼64 d for TIC 033834484. From follow-up ground-based spectroscopy, we find that TIC 033834484 has an effective temperature of 24 210 K (140), a surface gravity of log g/cms-2 = 5.28 (03) and TIC 309658435 has an effective temperature of 25 910 K (150), a surface gravity of log g/cms-2 = 5.48 (03).