Related papers: Tomography of Polars
I review the method of Doppler tomography which translates binary-star line profiles taken at a series of orbital phases into a distribution of emission over the binary. I begin with a discussion of the basic principles behind Doppler…
Since its conception, Doppler tomography has matured into a versatile and widely used tool. It exploits the information contained in the highly-structured spectral line-profiles typically observed in mass-transferring binaries. Using…
Doppler tomography is a well-known method in astrophysics to image the accretion flow, often in the shape of thin discs, in compact binary stars. As accretion discs rotate, all emitted line radiation is Doppler-shifted. In fast-ion D-alpha…
Astronomical polarimetry is a powerful technique that can provide physical information sometimes difficult or impossible to obtain by any other type of observation. Almost every class of binary star can benefit from polarimetric…
Polarimetry provides key physical information on the properties of interacting binary systems, sometimes difficult to obtain by any other type of observation. Indeed, radiation processes such as scattering by free electrons in the hot…
Doppler tomography is a technique that has revolutionised the interpretation of the phase-resolved spectroscopic observations of interacting binary systems. We present the results of our investigation of reversing the velocity axis to…
I collect emission line profiles for seven intermediate polars, phase-resolved over the spin cycles. I then present the first systematic application of Doppler tomography to the spin cycles, with the aim of investigating whether spin-cycle…
Doppler tomography is a method to compute the emissivity distribution within the co-rotating frames of binary stars from observations of their emission line profiles at multiple orbital phases. A key assumption of the method as it is…
Emission line Doppler tomography is a powerful tool that resolves the accretion flow in binaries on micro-arcsecond scales using time-resolved spectroscopy. I present an extension to Doppler tomography that relaxes one of its fundamental…
We present phase-resolved spectroscopy of the bright, eclipsing polar HU Aqr obtained with high time (~30sec) and spectral (1.6 A) resolution when the system was in a high accretion state. The trailed spectrograms reveal clearly the…
We present the results of applying our inside-out velocity projection and flux modulation mapping techniques to the Doppler tomography of magnetic cataclysmic variables. The inside-out tomogram is constructed by directly projecting…
We review the main observational characteristics of AM Herculis stars (polars) at X-ray, EUV, UV, IR and optical wavelengths. Particular emphasis is given to multi-epoch, multi-wavelength observations of the eclipsing polar HU Aqr (RX…
Binarity is often invoked to explain peculiarities that can not be explained by the standard theory of stellar evolution. Detecting orbital motion via the Doppler effect is the best method to test binarity when direct imaging is not…
Doppler imaging, a technique which inverts spectral line profile variations of an Ap star into a two-dimensional abundance maps, provides new observational constraints on diffusion mechanism in the presence of a global magnetic field. A…
High-resolution Doppler spectroscopy is a powerful tool for identifying molecular species in the atmospheres of both transiting and non-transiting exoplanets. Currently, such data is analysed using cross-correlation techniques to detect the…
One objective of the Polstar spectropolarimetry mission is to characterize the degree of nonconservative mass transfer that occurs at various stages of binary evolution, from the initial mass reversal to the late Algol phase. The proposed…
We review the recent multifrequency studies of galactic black hole binaries, aiming at revealing the underlying emission processes and physical properties in these systems. The optical and infrared observations are important for determining…
The determination of velocities of stars from precise Doppler measurements is described here using relativistic theory of astronomical reference frames so as to determine the Keplerian and post-Keplerian parameters of binary systems. We…
A review is given on aspects of indirect imaging techniques in X-ray binaries which are used as diagnostics tools for probing the X-ray dominated accretion disc physics. These techniques utilize observed properties such as the emission line…
Radiation of X-ray bursts and of accretion shocks in weakly magnetized neutron stars in low-mass X-ray binaries is produced in plane-parallel atmospheres dominated by electron scattering. We first discuss polarization produced by single…