SWIFT J0503.7-2819: A nearly synchronous intermediate polar below the period gap?

Abstract

Based on the X-ray observations from XMM-Newton and Swift, and optical observations from Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and AAVSO, we present temporal and spectral properties of probable intermediate polar SWIFT J0503.7-2819. The X-ray light curve shows two distinctive features, where possibly the second pole seems to be active during the middle of the XMM-Newton observations. Present analysis confirms and also refines the previously reported orbital period of SWIFT J0503.7-2819 as 81.65$\pm$0.04 min. The X-ray and optical variations of this target have been found to occur at the period of $\sim$ 65 min, which we propose as the spin period of the white dwarf (WD). The energy-dependent modulation at this period, which are due to the photoelectric absorption in the accretion flow, also assures this conjecture. Two temperature thermal plasma model well explains the X-ray spectra with temperatures of $\sim$ 150 eV and $\sim$ 18.5 keV, which is absorbed by a dense material with an average equivalent hydrogen column density of 3.8 $\times$ 10${}^{22}$ cm${}^{-2}$ that partially covers $\sim$ 27% of the X-ray source. An attempt is made to understand the accretion flow in this system using the present data of SWIFT J0503.7-2819. If the proposed spin period is indeed the actual period, then SWIFT J0503.7-2819 could be the first nearly synchronous intermediate polar below the period gap.

Accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (6)

• The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite
• Estimating distances from parallaxes. V: Geometric and photogeometric distances to 1.47 billion stars in Gaia Early Data Release 3
• The All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) Light Curve Server v1.0
• PALOMA: A Magnetic CV between Polars and Intermediate Polars
• Swift J0503.7-2819: A Short-Period Asynchronous Polar or Stream-Fed Intermediate Polar
• Optical spectroscopic classification of 35 hard X-ray sources from the Swift-BAT 70-month catalogue

Cited by in corpus (2)

• SDSS J134441.83+204408.3: A highly asynchronous, short-period magnetic cataclysmic variable with a 56 MG field strength
• Kepler K2 and TESS observations of two magnetic cataclysmic variables: The new asynchronous polar SDSS J084617.11+245344.1 and Paloma