HD 60435: The star that stopped pulsating

Abstract

HD 60435 is a well-known rapidly oscillating (roAp) Ap star with a series of alternating even and odd degree modes, making it a prime asteroseismic target. It is also an oblique pulsator with rotational inclination, i, and magnetic/pulsation obliquity, β, such that both magnetic/pulsation poles are viewed over the rotation period, Prot = 7.679696 d, determined from rotational light variations. While some roAp stars have stable pulsation mode amplitudes over decades, HD 60435 is known to have amplitude variations on time scales as short as 1 d. We show from 5 yr of TESS observations that there is strong amplitude modulation on this short time scale with possible mode interactions. Most remarkably, HD 60435 stopped pulsating during the time span of the TESS observations. This is the first time that any pulsating star has been observed to cease pulsating entirely. That has implications for mode interaction, excitation and damping, and is relevant to the problem of why only some stars in many pulsation instability strips pulsate, while others do not. During a 24.45-d time span of the TESS data when there was mode stability for a dipole mode and a quadrupole mode, the oblique pulsator model constrained i and β, which we used to model those modes with a magnetic pulsation model from which we determined a polar field strength of 4 kG, in good agreement with a known magnetic measurement. We modelled the frequency separations showing that they can constrain the global metallicity, something that is not possible from spectroscopy of the highly peculiar Ap atmosphere.