Related papers: Hibernation Revived by Weak Magnetic Braking
Classical novae are common cataclysmic events involving a binary system of a white dwarf and a main sequence or red giant companion star. In metal-poor environments, these explosions produce ejecta different from their solar counterparts…
I outline the evidence pertinent to the connection between the nova explosion and mass transfer rates in CVs. I conclude that there is still insufficient evidence to decide whether or not such a connection exists.
We study metastable motions in weakly damped Hamiltonian systems. These are believed to inhibit the transport of energy through Hamiltonian, or nearly Hamiltonian, systems with many degrees of freedom. We investigate this question in a very…
Turbulence is a complex physical process prevalent in modern physics, particularly in ionized environments like interstellar gas, where magnetic fields play a dynamic role. However, the precise influence of magnetic fields in such settings…
We use the rapid binary population synthesis code COMPAS to investigate commonly used prescriptions for the determination of mass transfer stability in close binaries and the orbital separations after stable mass transfer. The degree of…
We report on our second campaign to search for old nova shells around cataclysmic variables (CVs). Our aim was to test the theory that nova eruptions cause cycles in the mass transfer rates of CVs. These mass transfer cycles change the…
Novae are the observational manifestations of thermonuclear runaways on the surface of accreting white dwarfs (WDs). Although novae are an ubiquitous phenomenon, their properties at low metallicity are not well understood. Using the…
Nova explosions occur on the white dwarf component of a Cataclysmic Variable binary stellar system that is accreting matter lost by its companion. When sufficient material has been accreted by the white dwarf, a thermonuclear runaway occurs…
The saturated, boosted, and disrupted magnetic braking (SBD MB) model is an empirical prescription that has recently gained support from close-binary observations. Different boosting ($K$) and disruption ($\eta$) parameters appear necessary…
Using numerical simulations based on solving the general relativistic hydrodynamic equations, we study the dynamics of a phase transition in the dense core of isolated rotating neutron stars, triggered by the back bending instability…
The observed orbital period distribution of cataclysmic variables (CVs), the space density derived from observations, and the observed orbital period minimum are known to disagree with theoretical predictions since decades. More recently,…
We present spectroscopy and orbital periods Porb for 30 apparently non-magnetic cataclysmic binaries with periods below about 3 hours, nearly all of which are dwarf novae, mostly of the SU Ursae Majoris subclass. We then turn to the…
We give an updated version of the analytical equation of state used in the Cambridge stellar evolution code (STARS) as a free to use open-source package that we have used to model cool white dwarfs down to temperatures…
I review our current understanding of the evolution of cataclysmic variables (CVs). I first provide a brief introductory "CV primer", in which I describe the physical structure of CVs, as well as their astrophysical significance. The main…
Cataclysmic Variables (CVs) are semi-detached binaries composed of a white dwarf orbiting a lower-mass K or M star. We investigate whether CVs are responsible for a new intriguing feature (the `hook') that appears in the Gaia DR3…
We conduct numerical simulations of multiple nova eruptions in detached, widely separated symbiotic systems that include an asymptotic giant branch (AGB) companion to investigate the impact of white dwarf (WD) mass and binary separation on…
In a recent publication we established an analogy between the free energy of a hard sphere system and the energy of an elastic network [1]. This result enables one to study the free energy landscape of hard spheres, in particular to define…
The Dwarf Nova Oscillations observed in Cataclysmic Variable (CV) stars are interpreted in the context of a Low Inertia Accretor model, in which accretion on to an equatorial belt of the white dwarf primary causes the belt to vary its…
Symbiotic binaries are systems containing white dwarfs (WDs) and red giants. Symbiotic novae are those systems in which thermonuclear eruptions occur on the WD components. These are to be distinguished from events driven by accretion disk…
White dwarfs experience a thermal renaissance when they receive mass from a stellar companion in a binary. For accretion rates < 10^-8 Msun/yr, the freshly accumulated hydrogen/helium envelope ignites in a thermally unstable manner that…