Cyclotron Modeling of the Polar CP Tuc

TL;DR

This paper introduces CYCLOPS, a 3D radiative transfer modeling code, to analyze cyclotron emission in the polar CP Tuc, aiming to determine the accretion column's location through optical and X-ray data.

Contribution

The paper presents CYCLOPS, a new 3D radiative transfer code for modeling cyclotron emission in polars, applied to CP Tuc to explore accretion geometries.

Findings

Reasonable fits for optical data in both accretion scenarios.

Modeling X-ray light curves could constrain the accretion column location.

CYCLOPS effectively models cyclotron emission in polars.

Abstract

CP Tuc (AX J2315-592) is a polar for which two accretion geometries have been put forward. They differ in the location of the accretion column on the white-dwarf surface. In this study, we present new multiband optical photometric and polarimetric data to study the post-shock position. These data are used as input for CYCLOPS, our new code for modeling the cyclotron emission from post-shock regions of polars. CYCLOPS has a full 3-D treatment of the radiative transfer and is a powerful tool to study the physical properties of the emitting region. We find reasonable fits for the optical data of CP Tuc in both scenarios. We suggest that it should be possible to constrain the location of the base of the accreting column by modeling the X-ray light curves.