Related papers: The Accretion Geometry of the Asynchronous Polar V…
As the only eclipsing asynchronous polar, V1432 Aql provides an excellent laboratory to study the interaction between the accreted matter and the magnetic field. Here, we report an analysis of the X-ray data from the contemporaneous…
When a white dwarf (WD) is weakly magnetized and its accretion disk is thin, accreted material first reaches the WD's surface at its equator. This matter slows its orbit as it comes into co-rotation with the WD, dissipating kinetic energy…
The magnetic Cataclysmic Variable (mCV) V1432 Aql (RX 1940.1-1025) belongs to the four-member subclass of near-synchronous polars with a slight non-synchronism (<2 %) between the spin period of the white dwarf and the binary period. In…
A detailed analysis of X-ray data from ROSAT, ASCA, XMM and RXTE for the asynchronous polar V1432 Aql along with Stokes polarimetry data from SAAO, is presented. Power spectra from long-baseline ROSAT data show a spin period of 12150s along…
High-energy data of accreting white dwarfs give access to the regime of the primary accretion-induced energy release and the different proposed accretion scenarios. We perform XMM-Newton observations of polars selected due to their ROSAT…
Radiation emitted from an accretion disk around a massive black hole is a widely discussed model for the UV/soft X-ray excess emission observed in the spectra of many AGN. A self-consistent calculation of the structure and the emerging…
The quiescent emission of the anomalous X-ray pulsar (AXP) 4U 0142+61 extends over a broad range of energy, from radio up to hard X-rays. In particular, this object is unique among soft gamma-ray repeaters (SGRs) and AXPs in presenting…
Polluted white dwarfs serve as astrophysical mass spectrometers - their photospheric abundances are used to infer the composition of planetary objects that accrete onto them. We show that due to asymmetries in the accretion process, the…
Based on optical and infrared survey data spanning $\approx 20$ years of observations, the long-term variability of the polar V379 Vir with a brown dwarf secondary has been studied. By modeling the spectral energy distribution, we constrain…
The atmospheres of a large proportion of white dwarf stars are polluted by heavy elements that are expected to sink out of visible layers on short timescales. This has been interpreted as a signature of ongoing accretion of debris from…
Models for the characteristically soft X-ray spectrum of the compact X-ray source V1498 Aql (=4U 1957+11) have ranged from optically thick Comptonization to multicolor accretion disk models. We critically examine the X-ray spectrum of V1408…
We report on XMM-Newton and NuSTAR X-ray observations of the prototypical polar, AM Herculis, supported by ground-based photometry and spectroscopy, all obtained in high accretion states. In 2005, AM Herculis was in its regular mode of…
Our previous theoretical study of the impact of an accreting envelope on the thermal state of an underlying white dwarf (WD) has yielded equilibrium core temperatures, classical nova ignition masses and thermal luminosities for WDs…
We propose that the quiescent emission of AXPs/SGRs is powered by accretion from a fallback disk, requiring magnetic dipole fields in the range 10^{12}-10^{13} G, and that the luminous hard tails of their X-ray spectra are produced by…
The boundary layers of weakly-magnetized white dwarfs (WDs) accreting at rates <=10^16 g/s are radially extended, hot, optically-thin, and they advect some of their internally-dissipated energy (Narayan & Popham 1993). Motivated by this, I…
We perform broadband spectral and timing studies of the Galactic low-mass black hole candidate AT2019wey using quasi-simultaneous NICER, Swift, and NuSTAR observations obtained in 2022. The long-term MAXI light curve, along with the…
Reflection of X-rays from cool material around a black hole is one of the few observational diagnostics of the accretion flow geometry. Models of this reflected spectrum generally assume that the accretion disk can be characterized by…
The X-ray spectrum from a cool accretion disk heated by virialized protons is computed. The cool disk is either embedded in a magnetically heated accretion disk corona or partly extends into an ion supported torus (or ADAF). We calculate…
X-ray spectra of dwarf novae in quiescence observed by Chandra and XMM-Newton provide new information on the boundary layers of their accreting white dwarfs. Comparison of observations and models allows us to extract estimates for the…
The nature of the broad-band spectra of supermassive accreting black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is still unknown. The hard X-ray spectra of Seyferts as well as of Galactic stellar-mass black holes (GBHs) are well represented by…