Spectroscopic Orbital Periods for 29 Cataclysmic Variables from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

TL;DR

This study presents spectroscopic orbital periods for 29 cataclysmic variables from SDSS, revealing diverse properties, including some with low variability, eclipsing features, and contributions from secondary stars, expanding understanding of CV populations.

Contribution

First spectroscopic orbital period measurements for 29 SDSS cataclysmic variables, including analysis of their spectral features and system characteristics.

Findings

Most systems have periods under 2 hours.

Some systems show contributions from secondary stars.

Identification of systems with magnetic and novalike features.

Abstract

We report follow-up spectroscopy of 29 cataclysmic variables from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), 22 of which were discovered by SDSS and seven other previously known systems that were recovered in SDSS. The periods for 16 of these objects were included in the tabulation by Gaensicke et al. (2009). While most of the systems have periods less than 2 hours, only one has a period in the 80-86 minute 'spike' found by Gaensicke et al. (2009), and 11 have periods longer than 3 hours, indicating that the present sample is skewed toward longer-period, higher-luminosity objects. Seven of the objects have spectra resembling dwarf novae, but have apparently never been observed in outburst, suggesting that many cataclysmics with relatively low variability amplitude remain to be discovered. Some of the objects are notable. SDSS J07568+0858 and SDSS J08129+1911 were previously known to have deep eclipses; in addition to spectroscopy, we use archival data from the CRTTS to refine their periods. We give a parallax-based distance of 195 (+54, -39) pc for LV Cnc (SDSS J09197+0857), which at Porb = 81 m has the shortest orbital period in our sample. SDSS J08091+3814 shows both the spectroscopic phase offset and phase-dependent absorption found in SW Sextantis stars. The average spectra of SDSS J08055+0720 and SDSS J16191+1351 show contributions from K-type secondaries, and SDSS J080440+0239 shows a contribution from an early M star. We use these to constrain the distances. SDSS J09459+2922 has characteristics typical of a magnetic system. SDSS11324+6249 may be a novalike variable, and if so, its orbital period (99 min) is unusually short for that subclass.