Starspots in short-period Kepler binaries

We apply this technique to Kepler light curves for 414 binary systems that were identified as having anticorrelated O-C curves for the mid-times of the primary and secondary eclipses, or in the case of non-eclipsing systems, their light-curve minima. This phase tracking approach extracts more information about starspot and binary system behaviour than may be easily obtained from the O-C curves.

We confirm the hypothesis of Tran et al. that we can successfully follow the rotational motions of spots on the surfaces of the stars in these binaries. In ~34% of the systems, the spot rotation is retrograde as viewed in the frame rotating with the orbital motion, while ~13% show significant prograde spot rotation. The remaining systems show either little spot rotation or erratic behaviour, or sometimes include intervals of both types of behaviour.