Exploring the tilted accretion disc of AQ Men with TESS
Abstract
AQ Men is a nova-like variable which is presumed to have a tilted, precessing accretion disc. Grazing eclipses in this system have been speculated to be useful in exploring the geometry of its accretion disc. In this work we analysed TESS observations of AQ Men, which provide the best light curve of this object thus far. We show that the depths of the eclipses are changing with the orientation of the accretion disc, which means that they can serve as a direct test of the tilted accretion disc models. The precession period of the accretion disc is increasing during the TESS observations. However, it is still shorter than the period determined in the previous studies. The amplitude of the variability related to the precession of the accretion disc varies, and so does the shape of this variability. Moreover, we have detected a positive superhump that was previously unseen in AQ Men. Interestingly, the positive superhump has a strongly non-sinusoidal shape, which is not expected for a nova-like variable.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2103.03041,
title = {Exploring the tilted accretion disc of AQ Men with TESS},
author = {Krystian Ilkiewicz and Simone Scaringi and James M. C. Court and Thomas J. Maccarone and Diego Altamirano and Corey W. Bradshaw and Nathalie Degenaar and Matteo Fratta and Colin Littlefield and Tariq Shahbaz and Rudy Wijnands},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.03041},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
11 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS