No Arabic abstract
We analyse optical photometric data of short term variability (flickering) of the accreting white dwarf in the jet-ejecting symbiotic star MWC560. The observations are obtained in 17 nights during the period November 2011 - October 2019. The colour-magnitude diagram shows that the hot component of the system becomes redder as it gets brighter. For the flickering source we find that it has colour 0.14 < B-V < 0.40, temperature in the range 6300 < T_fl < 11000 K, and radius 1.2 < R_fl < 18 Rsun. We find a strong correlation (correlation coefficient 0.76, significance < 0.001) between B band magnitude and the average radius of the flickering source - as the brightness of the system increases the size of the flickering source also increases. The estimated temperature is similar to that of the bright spot of cataclysmic variables. In 2019 the flickering is missing, and the B-V colour of the hot component becomes bluer.
We report the detection of X-ray emission from the jet-driving symbiotic star MWC 560. We observed MWC 560 with XMM-Newton for 36 ks. We fitted the spectra from the EPIC pn, MOS1 and MOS2 instruments with XSPEC and examined the light curves with the package XRONOS. The spectrum can be fitted with a highly absorbed hard X-ray component from an optically-thin hot plasma, a Gaussian emission line with an energy of 6.1 keV and a less absorbed soft thermal component. The best fit is obtained with a model in which the hot component is produced by optically thin thermal emission from an isobaric cooling flow with a maximum temperature of 61 keV, which might be created inside an optically-thin boundary layer on the surface of the accreting with dwarf. The derived parameters of the hard component detected in MWC 560 are in good agreement with similar objects as CH Cyg, SS7317, RT Cru and T CrB, which all form a new sub-class of symbiotic stars emitting hard X-rays. Our previous numerical simulations of the jet in MWC 560 showed that it should produce detectable soft X-ray emission. We infer a temperature of 0.17 keV for the observed soft component, i.e. less than expected from our models. The total soft X-ray flux (i.e. at < 3 keV) is more than a factor 100 less than predicted for the propagating jet soon after its birth (<0.3 yr), but consistent with the value expected due its decrease with age. The ROSAT upper limit is also consistent with such a decrease. We find aperiodic or quasi-periodic variability on timescales of minutes and hours, but no periodic rapid variability. All results are consistent with an accreting white dwarf powering the X-ray emission and the existence of an optically-thin boundary layer around it.
We performed hydrodynamical simulations with and without radiative cooling of jet models with parameters representative for the symbiotic system MWC 560. For symbiotic systems we have to perform jet simulations of a pulsed underdense jet in a high density ambient medium. We present the jet structure resulting from our simulations and calculate emission plots which account for expected radiative processes. In addition, our calculations provide expansion velocities for the jet bow shock, the density and temperature structure in the jet, and the propagation and evolution of the jet pulses. In MWC 560 the jet axis is parallel to the line of sight so that the outflowing jet gas can be seen as blue shifted, variable absorption lines in the continuum of the underlying jet source. Based on our simulations we calculate and discuss synthetic absorption profiles. Based on a detailed comparison between model spectra and observations we discuss our hydrodynamical calculations for a pulsed jet in MWC 560 and suggest improvements for future models.
Here we present quasi-simultaneous observations of the flickering of the symbiotic binary star CH Cyg in U, B and V bands. We calculate the flickering source parameters and discuss the possible reason for the flickering cessation in the period 2010-2013.
MWC 560 (= V694 Mon) is the only known Symbiotic Star system in which the jet axis is practically parallel to the line of sight. Therefore this system is predestinated to study the dynamical evolution and the propagation of stellar jets. Spectroscopic monitoring done by Schmid et al. (2001) showed that the outflow is seen as absorption features in the continuum of the accretion disk and the accreting white dwarf, the emission line spectrum of the accretion disk and the spectrum of the red giant. We present the first numerical simulations of the jet of this particular object using the NIRVANA code (Ziegler & Yorke 1997) in order to reproduce the velocity structures seen in the observational data. This code solves the equations of hydrodynamics and was modified to calculate radiative losses due to non-equilibrium cooling by line-emission (Thiele 2000).
How are accretion discs affected by their outflows? To address this question for white dwarfs accreting from cool giants, we performed optical, radio, X-ray, and ultraviolet observations of the outflow-driving symbiotic star MWC 560 (=V694 Mon) during its 2016 optical high state. We tracked multi-wavelength changes that signalled an abrupt increase in outflow power at the initiation of a months-long outflow fast state, just as the optical flux peaked: (1) an abrupt doubling of Balmer absorption velocities; (2) the onset of a $20$ $mu$Jy/month increase in radio flux; and (3) an order-of-magnitude increase in soft X-ray flux. Juxtaposing to prior X-ray observations and their coeval optical spectra, we infer that both high-velocity and low-velocity optical outflow components must be simultaneously present to yield a large soft X-ray flux, which may originate in shocks where these fast and slow absorbers collide. Our optical and ultraviolet spectra indicate that the broad absorption-line gas was fast, stable, and dense ($gtrsim10^{6.5}$ cm$^{-3}$) throughout the 2016 outflow fast state, steadily feeding a lower-density ($lesssim10^{5.5}$ cm$^{-3}$) region of radio-emitting gas. Persistent optical and ultraviolet flickering indicate that the accretion disc remained intact. The stability of these properties in 2016 contrasts to their instability during MWC 560s 1990 outburst, even though the disc reached a similar accretion rate. We propose that the self-regulatory effect of a steady fast outflow from the disc in 2016 prevented a catastrophic ejection of the inner disc. This behaviour in a symbiotic binary resembles disc/outflow relationships governing accretion state changes in X-ray binaries.