Cataclysmic Variables as Universal Accretion Laboratories (Abstract)

Volume 46 number 2 (2018)

Christian Knigge

School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom; c.knigge@soton.ac.uk

Abstract

(Abstract only) Cataclysmic variables (CVs) are numerous, bright and nearby, making them excellent laboratories for the study of accretion physics. Since their accretion flows are unaffected by relativistic effects or ultra-strong magnetic fields, they provide a crucial “control” group for efforts to understand more complex/compact systems, such as accreting neutron stars (NSs) and black holes (BHs). I will review recent work on CVs, which has revealed that these superficially simple systems actually exhibit the full range of accretion-related phenomenology seen in accreting NSs and BHs. Given this rich set of shared behavior, it is reasonable to hope that much of accretion physics is universal. CVs hold great promise in this context as observational testing grounds for attempts to model and understand this physics.