SWIFT J0503.7-2819 is an intermediate polar, research suggests

Tomasz Nowakowski is a member of the physics.org community.

Astronomers used data from various telescopes to investigate a variable X-ray source. According to the results of the study, this source is an intermediate polar. There was a paper published on the arXiv pre-print server.

A cataclysmic variable is a star system with a white dwarf. They drop back down to a quiescent state after increasing in brightness. There is a very strong magnetic field in the white dwarfs that distinguishes polars from other CVs.

When the white dwarf is moderately magnetic, accretion happens through a truncated accretion disk. Intermediate polars are systems that are not directly related to each other. The observations show that the white dwarf spins quickly with the system's spin period. It is possible to reveal the intellectual property nature of some CVs with the help of the spin period and ephemeris.

There is a variable X-ray source that can be found at a distance of 2,731 light years. Further observations of J0503 have shown that it has an average time of 81.6 minutes.

In order to verify the hypothesis, a team of astronomy led by Nikita Rawat of the ARIES in India performed X-ray observations of J0503 with NASA's Swift and the European Space Agency's X MM-. The data from the AAVSO catalog was included in the study.

The researchers wrote in the paper that they had done X-ray and optical timing analyses.

According to the observations, J0503 has an hour and a half period. The white dwarf's spin period is the reason why the periodicity was found. If this is true, then J0503 would be the first near-simultaneous intellectual property.

The astronomer thinks that J0503 is not synchronized because the secondary star has a lowmagnetic moment. It isn't able to come into synchronism like the nearly synchronous systems of the past.

The research found that stream-fed accretion may be the main method of accretion. The photoelectric absorption in the accretion flow is one of the unique characteristics of the majority of the intellectual property.

The white dwarf's parameters were derived from the study. According to the paper, the star has a mass of about 0.54 solar mass, a mass accretion rate at a level of 1.44 10 10 solar mass per year, and a shock height of 28.6 kilometers.

More information: Nikita Rawat, J. C. Pandey, Arti Joshi, Simone Scaringi, Umesh Yadava, SWIFT J0503.7-2819: A nearly synchronous intermediate polar below the period gap? arXiv:2209.11141v1 [astro-ph.HE], arxiv.org/abs/2209.11141

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