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Cataclysmic variables (CVs) are close interacting binary star systems
in which mass typically flows from a low-mass main-sequence secondary
star to a white dwarf star. These pages give a brief overview of the
work we're doing. Originally we were going to include a full site
devoted to discussion of all things CV, but that would duplicate (poorly)
what is already available online (Wikipedia,
CVCat,
CVNet,
CV
Beginner's Guid, NASA
HEASARC E/PO), and in the well-written and comprehensive books
by Brian
Warner and Coel
Hellier (both are must-reads, but the latter is more accessible
to the non-specialist). No CVs have been directly imaged - they're
much to small and distant - but Mark
Garlick is an artist who's created some amazing conceptions of
CVs and related objects (see image at right).
If you'd like to run some numerical simulations of your own, please download FITDisk, which is a user-friendly demonstration version of our research code. We model CVs using the method of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), a Lagrangian numerical fluid dynamics method. Our SPH code was originally written by James Simpson, now a Ph.D. working with NASA. See our publications for details, and see the visualization page for animations of CV superhumps. Thanks to Florida Tech for granting me a sabbatical during the 2008-2009 academic year. Thanks to my hosts Paul Groot and Gijs Nelemans at Radboud University and The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for support through Visitor's Grant 040.11.046. This was supported in part by the National Science Foundation through grants AST-0205902, AST-0552798, and AST-1109332. (Last modified 1/8/12 by MW)
|
 Image
is copyright Mark A. Garlick/space-art.co.uk, used by permission.
Please do not copy this artwork without first contacting the artist. |