TY - JOUR
T1 - The cooling white dwarf in VW hydri after normal outburst and superoutburst
T2 - HST evidence of a sustained accretion belt
AU - Sion, Edward M.
AU - Cheng, F. U.Hua
AU - Huang, Min
AU - Hubeny, Ivan
AU - Szkody, Paula
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to Janet Mattei and AAVSO for their invaluable optical monitoring, required for scheduling our Hubble Space Telescope observation. It is a pleasure to thank Warren Sparks for useful discussions. I. H. is grateful to N. Allard for providing him with her H-quasimolecular data. This work is supported by NASA through grants GO3836.01-91A and GO6084.01-95A from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. P. S. was supported by NASA LTSA grant NAGW-3158 to the University of Washington. F. H. C. is also partially supported by NASA grants GO-6019 and AR-5817.
PY - 1996
Y1 - 1996
N2 - Hubble Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS) observations of VW Hyi one day after the end of a normal dwarf nova outburst reveal a heated white dwarf with deep, broad Lyα, narrow metallic absorption features, and evidence of a hotter Keplerian-broadened component manifested in quiescence as a broad continuum hump. Our best reduced χ2 fit to the data reveals (1) a DAZQ white dwarf with Teff= 22,500 ± 500 K, log g = 8, and photospheric abundances C = 0.5 solar, N = 5.0 solar, O = 2.0 solar, Si = 0.2 solar, Fe = 0.5 solar, with all other metals being 0.3 solar, and (2) a rapidly spinning accretion belt with Vrot = 3350 km s-1, Tbelt = 26,000 ± 1000 K, log g = 6.0, and a fractional belt area of approximately 11%. Our earlier FOS spectrum obtained 10 days after superoutburst reveals a cooler DAZQ white dwarf (20,500 ± 1000 K), relatively lower metal abundances, and a smaller fractional area (3%) for the accretion belt. Thus, 1 day after a normal outburst, the white dwarf is ≈2000 K hotter, the accretion belt fractional area is a factor of 3 greater, the accretion belt temperature appears to be cooler than at 10 days post-superoutburst, and the accreted atmosphere has relatively higher metal abundances. Finally, the accretion belt maintained during quiescence may provide a natural explanation for the 14 s soft X-ray oscillations, requires a deeper source of heating (compression and shear mixing), and implies a lower limit to the viscous spin-down timescale of 10 days.
AB - Hubble Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS) observations of VW Hyi one day after the end of a normal dwarf nova outburst reveal a heated white dwarf with deep, broad Lyα, narrow metallic absorption features, and evidence of a hotter Keplerian-broadened component manifested in quiescence as a broad continuum hump. Our best reduced χ2 fit to the data reveals (1) a DAZQ white dwarf with Teff= 22,500 ± 500 K, log g = 8, and photospheric abundances C = 0.5 solar, N = 5.0 solar, O = 2.0 solar, Si = 0.2 solar, Fe = 0.5 solar, with all other metals being 0.3 solar, and (2) a rapidly spinning accretion belt with Vrot = 3350 km s-1, Tbelt = 26,000 ± 1000 K, log g = 6.0, and a fractional belt area of approximately 11%. Our earlier FOS spectrum obtained 10 days after superoutburst reveals a cooler DAZQ white dwarf (20,500 ± 1000 K), relatively lower metal abundances, and a smaller fractional area (3%) for the accretion belt. Thus, 1 day after a normal outburst, the white dwarf is ≈2000 K hotter, the accretion belt fractional area is a factor of 3 greater, the accretion belt temperature appears to be cooler than at 10 days post-superoutburst, and the accreted atmosphere has relatively higher metal abundances. Finally, the accretion belt maintained during quiescence may provide a natural explanation for the 14 s soft X-ray oscillations, requires a deeper source of heating (compression and shear mixing), and implies a lower limit to the viscous spin-down timescale of 10 days.
KW - Novae, cataclysmic variables
KW - Stars: Individual (vw hydri)
KW - White dwarfs
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U2 - 10.1086/310318
DO - 10.1086/310318
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:21444450412
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 471
SP - L41-L44
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
IS - 1 PART II
ER -