Comprehensive Listing of 156 Reliable Orbital Periods for Novae, Including 49 New Periods
Bradley E. Schaefer

TL;DR
This study compiles a comprehensive list of 156 reliable orbital periods for novae, including 49 newly discovered, revealing insights into their period distribution, companion types, and population characteristics based on extensive survey data analysis.
Contribution
It provides the first large-scale, verified catalog of nova orbital periods, including new measurements and corrections, and analyzes their distribution and companion star types.
Findings
Discovered 31 new orbital periods for novae.
Identified a period gap between 1.70 and 2.66 hours.
Found that 31% of novae have evolved companions, mostly in the bulge population.
Abstract
I report on a large-scale search for the orbital periods (P) of most known nova systems, by looking for significant, coherent, and stable optical photometric modulation in two or more independent light curves taken mostly from the large surveys of TESS, Kepler, AAVSO, SMARTS, OGLE, ASAS, and ZTF. I have discovered 31 new orbital periods. Further, I have measured new periods for 18 novae with evolved companions, to 30 per cent accuracy, as based on their spectral energy distribution. Also, I have confirmed, improved, and rejected prior claims for P in 46 novae. (As part of this effort, I recognize that 5 novae display 1--3 coherent, significant, and transient periodicities 0.12--4.1 days, with these being mysterious as not being the orbital, spin, or superhump periods.) In all, I have compiled a comprehensive list of 156 reliable P values for novae. The histogram of nova periods shows a…
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