Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Dec 2006
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006aas...209.0911b&link_type=abstract
2007 AAS/AAPT Joint Meeting, American Astronomical Society Meeting 209, #09.11; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, V
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The temperature of a white dwarf (WD) in a cataclysmic variable (CV) can tell you much about the accretion history of the binary system, and hence the evolution of the system. Best seen in the ultraviolet, a white dwarf's temperature is typically measured through modeling of a UV spectrum. This approach has been taken for numerous CVs modeling the spectrum as a combination of accretion disk and WD photosphere and also for polars, the strongly magnetic (B 10-80 MG) subset of CVs that contain magnetically controlled accretion streams rather than a disk. The task of extracting information about the WD in an intermediate polar (IP, magnetic CVs with B < 5 MG) is a bit trickier as they contain both magnetically controlled accretion streams and a truncated accretion disk. The fact that there are only five IPs for which WD temperatures have been estimated is a testament to the difficulty of modeling these systems. Here we present initial results from our project of determining the temperatures of WDs in IPs. We show that traditional methods of obtaining an inner accretion disk radius via optical emission line wings is likely inaccurate for most IPs, and that in some cases, the truncation radius is so large that the accretion disk does not contribute UV flux. Finally, we show that IPs follow the general trend of magnetic CVs containing cooler WDs than non-magnetic CVs.
This work is supported in part by NSF grant AST0507514 and by NASA grant NNG04GE78G.
Belle Kunegunda E.
Sion Edward M.
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