Bibcode
Schmidtobreick, L.; Rodríguez-Gil, P.; Gänsicke, B.
Bibliographical reference
XII Latin American IAU Regional Meeting (Eds. G. Magris, G. Bruzual, & L. Carigi) Revista Mexicana de Astronomía y Astrofísica (Serie de Conferencias) Vol. 35, pp. 115-116 (2009) (http://www.astroscu.unam.mx/~rmaa/)
Advertised on:
5
2009
Citations
2
Refereed citations
2
Description
13 out of 48 nova-likes in the 2.8-4 h orbital period range are
eclipsing SW Sex stars - these are all the eclipsing cataclysmic
variables (CVs) in this range. Apparently, SW Sex stars are very
frequent and probably represent an important stage in CV evolution, as
they densely gather just above the period gap and exhibit extremely high
mass transfer rates. As the physical properties of SW Sex stars have
nothing to do with their inclination, this suggests that all non- or
weakly-magnetic CVs in the 2.8-4 h period range are physically similar
to the SW Sex stars. Here, we present our project on the search for
non-eclipsing SW Sex type stars. We perform time-resolved optical
spectroscopy of all sufficiently bright old novae and nova-like CVs in
the orbital period range between 2.8 and 4 h and search for
characteristic SW Sex behaviour. Eventually we want to quantify the
impact of the SW Sex phenomenon at the upper boundary of the orbital
period gap.