The Nature of Strange Modes in Classical Variable Stars

Abstract

Strange modes have been found in the radial spectrum of many luminous stars, most recently in Cepheids and RR Lyrae. We show that there is nothing strange about these modes -- they must exist even in the adiabatic limit. With a change of variables and without approximation the adiabatic linear pulsation equation is reduced to a Schroedinger equation in which the radial coordinate is the local sound-traversal time. In this formulation, the narrow hydrogen partial ionization region is seen to act as a potential barrier, separating the star into two regions. Resonances between the two regions result in the strange modes, for which the ratio of interior to exterior amplitude is at a minimum. The relative location of the barrier changes with the stellar parameters, and this gives rise to avoided level-crossings along a sequence of models. 2 The appearance of strange modes and the associated level crossings are exhibited with an analytic toy-model with the potential barrier approximated by a delta function. This toy-model is readily extensible to nonadiabatic modes. Hydrodynamical calculations find that pure strange mode limit-cycles have extremely small photospheric velocities and luminosity variations in the milli-magnitude range. They are therefore expected to be difficult to observe.