Indirect imaging of the accretion stream in eclipsing polars -- II. HU Aquarii

Abstract

We apply our technique for indirect imaging of the accretion stream to the polar HU Aquarii, using eclipse profiles observed when the system was in a high accretion state. The accretion stream is relatively luminous, contributing as much as the accretion region on the white dwarf, or more, to the overall system brightness. We model the eclipse profiles using a model stream consisting of a ballistic trajectory from the L1 point followed by a magnetically channelled trajectory that follows a dipole field line out of the orbital plane. We perform model fits using two geometries: a stream that accretes on to both footpoints of the field line, and a stream that accretes only on to the footpoint of the field line above the orbital plane. The stream images indicate that the distribution of emission along the stream is not a simple function of the radial distance from the white dwarf. The stream is redirected by the magnetic field of the white dwarf at a distance 1.0-1.3×1010 cm from the white dwarf; this implies a mass transfer rate in the range 8-76×1016 g s−1. The absorption dips in the light curve indicate that the magnetically entrained part of the stream moves from 42° to 48° from the line of centres over the three nights of observation. This is in close agreement with the results of the one-footpoint models, suggesting that this is the more appropriate geometry for these data. The stream images show that, in almost all sections of the stream, the flux peaks in B and is successively fainter in U, V and R.