1. Long-term photometric monitoring and spectroscopy of the white dwarf pulsar AR Scorpii
- Author
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Pelisoli, Ingrid, Marsh, T. R., Parsons, S. G., Aungwerojwit, A., Ashley, R. P., Breedt, E., Brown, A. J., Dhillon, V. S., Dyer, M. J., Green, M. J., Kerry, P., Littlefair, S. P., Sahman, D. I., Shahbaz, T., Wild, J. F., Chakpor, A., and Lakhom, R.
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Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics - Abstract
AR Scorpii (AR Sco) is the only radio-pulsing white dwarf known to date. It shows a broad-band spectrum extending from radio to X-rays whose luminosity cannot be explained by thermal emission from the system components alone, and is instead explained through synchrotron emission powered by the spin-down of the white dwarf. We analysed NTT/ULTRACAM, TNT/ULTRASPEC, and GTC/HiPERCAM high-speed photometric data for AR Sco spanning almost seven years and obtained a precise estimate of the spin frequency derivative, now confirmed with 50-sigma significance. Using archival photometry, we show that the spin down rate of P/Pdot = 5.6e6 years has remained constant since 2005. As well as employing the method of pulse-arrival time fitting used for previous estimates, we also found a consistent value via traditional Fourier analysis for the first time. In addition, we obtained optical time-resolved spectra with WHT/ISIS and VLT/X-shooter. We performed modulated Doppler tomography for the first time for the system, finding evidence of emission modulated on the orbital period. We have also estimated the projected rotational velocity of the M-dwarf as a function of orbital period and found that it must be close to Roche lobe filling. Our findings provide further constraints for modelling this unique system., Comment: 15 pages, 18 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS
- Published
- 2022
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