PoS - Proceedings of Science
Volume 255 - The Golden Age of Cataclysmic Variables and Related Objects - III (Golden2015) - Cataclysmic Variables
The Propeller White Dwarf Pulsar in AE Aquarii: A Multi-Frequency Emission Laboratory
P. Meintjes
Full text: pdf
Pre-published on: February 10, 2017
Published on: May 23, 2017
Abstract
The enigmatic nova-like variable system AE Aquarii shows highly-transient multi-frequency emission from radio to possibly Very High Energy (VHE) [$\epsilon_{\gamma} \geq 0.1 \, \mbox{TeV}$] gamma-rays that is most probably driven by the propeller ejection of material from the system by a rapidly rotating highly magnetized white dwarf. The propeller ejection of matter from the system results in the white dwarf to spin down at a rate of $\dot{P} \approx 6 \times 10^{-14} \, \mbox{s s}^{-1}$, resulting in a spin-down power of $P_{\rm s-d} \approx 10^{34} \, \mbox{erg s}^{-1}$. The very effective magnetospheric propeller mechanism in AE Aquarii results in the accretion luminosity, derived from UV and X-ray measurements, to be only a fraction of the spin-down power, i.e. $L_{\rm acc} \sim 0.001 P_{\rm s-d}$. This implies that the reservoir driving the multi-frequency emission from radio to possibly VHE gamma-rays is most probably the spin-down power associated with the loss of rotational kinetic energy of the white dwarf. This places AE Aquarii in the category of the rotational driven X-ray pulsars. It will be shown that the unique multi-frequency emission from AE Aquarii is intimitely tied to the the rapidly rotating magnetosphere of the white dwarf and propeller ejection of matter from the system. In this paper the energetics for particle acceleration will be investigated as well as the associated processes that drive emission from radio to possibly VHE gamma-rays in this unique system.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.255.0007
How to cite

Metadata are provided both in "article" format (very similar to INSPIRE) as this helps creating very compact bibliographies which can be beneficial to authors and readers, and in "proceeding" format which is more detailed and complete.

Open Access
Creative Commons LicenseCopyright owned by the author(s) under the term of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.