Discovery of a double eclipsing binary with periods near a 3:2 ratio^⋆

¹ Modrá 587, 760 01 Zlín, Czech Republic
e-mail: pavel.cagas@gmail.com
² Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University, 140 W 18th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
e-mail: pejcha@astronomy.ohio-state.edu

Received: 13 June 2012
Accepted: 15 June 2012

Abstract

The evolution of multiple stellar systems can be driven by Kozai cycles and tidal friction (KCTF), which shrink the orbit of the inner binary. There is an interesting possibility that two close binaries on a common long-period orbit experience mutually-induced KCTF. We present the discovery of a possible new quadruple system composed of two unresolved eclipsing binaries (EBs), CzeV343 (V ~ 13.5 mag). We obtained photometric observations of CzeV343 that completely cover the two orbital periods and we successfully model the light curves as the sum of two detached EBs. We provide confidence intervals for the model parameters and minima timings by bootstrap resampling of our data. One of the EBs shows a distinctly eccentric orbit with a total eccentricity of about 0.18. The two orbital periods, 1.20937 and 0.80693 days, are within 0.1% of a 3:2 ratio. We speculate that this might be the result of KCTF-driven evolution of a quadruple system and we discuss this hypothesis in the context of other quadruple systems composed of two EBs. We make our double EB fitting code publicly available to provide a tool for long-term monitoring of the mutual orbit in such systems.