Spitzer Space Telescope Observations of Magnetic Cataclysmic Variables: Possibilities for the Presence of Dust in Polars<\/a><\/p>\nThe Astrophysical Journal 659, 1541 (2007)<\/p>\n
Abstract<\/h2>\n
We present Spitzer photometry of six short-period polars, EF Eri, V347 Pav, VV Pup, V834 Cen, GG Leo, and MR Ser. We have combined the Spitzer IRAC (3.6-8.0 \u03bcm) data with the 2MASS JHKs photometry to construct the SEDs of these systems from the near- to mid-IR (1.235-8 \u03bcm). We find that five out of the six polars have flux densities in the mid-IR that are substantially in excess of the values expected from the stellar components alone. We have modeled the observed SEDs with a combination of contributions from the white dwarf, secondary star, and either cyclotron emission or a cool, circumbinary dust disk to fill in the long-wavelength excess. We find that a circumbinary dust disk is the most likely cause of the 8 \u03bcm excess in all cases, but we have been unable to rule out the specific (but unlikely) case of completely optically thin cyclotron emission as the source of the observed 8 \u03bcm flux density. While both model components can generate enough flux at 8 \u03bcm, neither dust nor cyclotron emission alone can match the excess above the stellar components at all wavelengths. A model combining both cyclotron and dust contributions, possibly with some accretion-generated flux in the near-IR, is probably required, but our observed SEDs are not sufficiently well sampled to constrain such a complicated model. If the 8 \u03bcm flux density is caused by the presence of a circumbinary dust disk, then our estimates of the masses of these disks are many orders of magnitude below the mass required to affect CV evolution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
C. S. Brinkworth, D. W. Hoard, S. Wachter, S. B. Howell, David R. Ciardi, P. Szkody, T. E. Harrison, G. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"template":"","publication_author":[15],"class_list":["post-6456","physics_publications","type-physics_publications","status-publish","hentry","publication_author-esin"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/physics_publications\/6456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/physics_publications"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/physics_publications"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"publication_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication_author?post=6456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}